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O. 60 25 cts. 



Copyright, 1885, 
Harper & Brothers 


March 5, 1886 


Subscription Price 
per Year, 52 Numbers, $15 


Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter 


MOVEMENTS 


OF 


RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN BRITAIN 

DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 


BY 

JOHN TULLOCH, D.D., LL.D. 

SENIOR PRINCIPAL IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS 


Books yon may hold readily in your hand are the most u sefu l , after all 

~~~ COlTgr^OJINSON 



NEW YORK 

HARPER k BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

1886 











HARPER’S HANDY SERIES. 

no. Latest hmes - 

25. The Luck of the Darrells. A Novel. By James Payn,- 25 

26. Houp-la. A Novelette. By John Strange Winter. Illustrated. 25 

27. Self-Doomed. A Novel. By B. L. Far jeon. 25 

28. Malthcs and His Work. By James Bonar, M.A. 25 

29. The Dark House. A Novel. By G. Manville Fenn. 25 

30. The Ghost’s Touch, and Other Stories. By Wilkie Collins. 25 

31. The Royal Mail. By James Wilson Hyde. Illustrated. 25 

32. The Sacred Nugget. A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon. 25 

33. Primus in Indis. A Romance. By M. J. Colquhoun. 25. 

34. Musical History. By G. A. Macfarren. 25 

35. In Quapters with the 25th Dragoons. By J. S. Winter. 25 

36. Goblin Gold. A Novel. By May Crommelin. 25 

37. The Wanderings of Ulysses. By Prof. C. Witt. Translated 

by Frances Younghusband. . . 25 

38. A Barren Title. A Novel. By T. W. Speight. 25 

39. Us: An Old-fashioned Story. By Mrs. Molesworth. HIM.... 25 

40. Ounces of Prevention. By Titns Munson Coan, A.M., M.D.... 25 

41. Half-Way. An Anglo-French Romance. 25 

42. Christmas Angel. A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon. Illustrated... 25 

43. Mrs. Dymond. A Novel. By Miss Thackeray. 25 

44. The Bachelor Vicar of Newforth. A Novel. By Mrs. J. Har- 

court-Roe. 25 

45. In the Middle Watch. A Novel. By W. Clark Russell. 25 

46. Tiresias, and Other Poems. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 25 

47. Last Days at Apswich. A Novel. 25 

48. Cabin and Gondola. By Charlotte Dunning. 30 

49. Lester’s Secret. A Novel. By Mary Cecil Hay. 30 

50. A Man of Honor. A Novel. By J. S. Winter. Illustrated ... 25 

51. Stories of Provence. From the French of Alphonse Daudet. 

By S. L. Lee. 25 

52. ’Twlst Love and Duty. A Novel. By Tighe Hopkins... 25 

53. A Plea for the Constitution, &c. By George Bancroft. 25 

54. Fortune’s Wheel. A Novel. By Alex. Innes Shand. 25 

55. Lord Beaconsfield’s Correspondence with his Sister — 

1832-1852. 7 . 25 

56. Mauleyerer’s Millions. A Yorkshire Romance. By T. Wemyss 

Reid.’. 25 

57. What Does History Teach? Two Edinburgh Lectures. By 

John Stuart Blackie. 25 

58. TheLastoftheMacAllisters. A Novel. By Mrs. Amelia E. Barr. 25 

59. Cavalry Life. Sketches and Stories. By J. S. Winter. 25 

GO. Movements of Religious Thought in Britain during the Nine¬ 
teenth Century. By John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D. 25 

Other volumes in preparation. 

JKJ* Harter «fc Brothers will send any of the above works by mail , postage pre~ 
paid, to any part of the United Stales or Canada, on receipt of the price. 































Mrs. OLIPHANT, 

AUTHOR OF “THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” “A BELEAGUERED CITY,” 
“LIFE OF EDWARD IRVING,” “THE LITERARY HISTORY 
OF ENGLAND, 1790-1825,” ETC. 

My dear Mrs. Oliphant, — It is a great pleasure to 
me to be allowed to associate your name with these Lect¬ 
ures. Slight as they are, I have been reminded more 
than once, during their preparation, of a large subject 
which used to engage our discussion many years ago, and 
in the treatment of which you were to bear what would 
have proved by far the most interesting part. This,'like 
many other projects, is not now likely to be attempted; 
but the thought of it has brought you and our long 
friendship much to my mind. 

If I were to express all the admiration I feel for your 
genius, and still more all the esteem I have learned to 
j cherish for your character, I should use language which I 
'know you would refuse to read; but I may at least be 
allowed to say thus publicly that I know of no writer 
to whose large powers, spiritual insight, and purity of 
thought, and subtle discrimination of many of the best 
aspects of our social life and character, our generation 
owes so much as it does to you. 

Always faithfully yours, 

John Tulloch. 

University, St. Andrews, 

August , 1885. 































CONTENTS. 


* 




LECTURE I. 




COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


PAGE 

Scope of the present course. 7-9 

The beginnings of the century—Wordsworth. 9 

Coleridge early abandoned poetry. 10 

Extent of his influence on religious thought. 11 

Defects in his character—Lamb: Carlyle. 11 

State of religion at beginning of the century. 12 

Coleridge exercised a definite influence on Religious Thought by — 

(1.) A renovation of current Christian ideas.13-21 

His spiritual philosophy. 13 

Severance of religion from the highest spiritual life in man by 

the Evangelical School. 14 

Coleridge maintained their essential kinship. 15 

Instance his exposition of the doctrines of Sin and Redemp¬ 
tion. 18 

He recognized a province of the Unknown. 20 

(2.) An advance in Biblical Study.21-24 

“Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit”... 21 

Futility of the theory of literal Inspiration.. 22 

Alleged difficulty of the selective process. 23 

Its necessity. 24 

(3.) By an enlarged conception of the Church.24-26 

Essay on “The Constitution of Church and State. 25 

National Church and Christian Church. 25 

His Disciples—Julius Charles Hare : John Sterling.27-30 


LECTURE II. 

THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 


Whately and the Early Oriel Movement. 31 

The“Noetics”—Dr. Hawkins : Copleston: Arnold.-. 31 

Blanco White. 33 

Whately—his youth. Limited tastes in Literature. 34 

Comparison with Coleridge. 35 

His critical work “On Some of the Difficulties in the Writings of 

the Apostle Paul ” . 36 

Logic and Scriptural truth. 37 

His character and influence. 37 
































4 


/ 


CONTENTS. 




PAGH 

Arnold—his friendship with Whately... 38 

“ Is Arnold a Christian ?”.. 38 

His insistence on the relation of Christianity to every-day life— 39 

His idea of the Church. 41 

Work in Biblical criticism. 43 

Hampden—Motives for his persecution. 45 

The Bampton Lectures of 1832, on “The Scholastic Philosophy in 

Relation to Christian Theology”. 46 

The. outcry of 1836. 49 

Value of his critical work. 50 

Thirlwall—His early studies—translation of Scbleiermacher—charac¬ 
ter and influence.51-54 

Milman.54-57 

His “History of the Jews”. 56 

LECTURE III. 

THE OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 

Its beginnings.. 58 

Newman and Pusey—their early views. 59 

Pusey’s German studies, and original Liberalism.60 

Newman’s religious and personal influence. 61 

R. H. Froude—his influence on Newman.63 

His character. 64 

Keble—his ascendency at Oxford. 66 

Character. 66 

The “ Christian Year ”. 68 

Points of contact with Newman. 68 

Course of the movement—political events. 69 

Keble’s Assize Sermon—followed by “ Tracts for the Times ”_ 70 

Newman as a tract-writer. 70 

Leadership of Dr. Pusey. 72 

Dogmatic principles at root. 73 

Newman’s ascendency—Sermons. 75 

Progress towards Rome. 75 

Tract 90—consequences. 76 

Rise of the. Younger Anglican School. 78 

Newman’s Anglo - Catholicism essentially external and transi¬ 
tional . 79 

Significance and effects of the Oxford movement. 80 

LECTURE IV. 

MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 

Intellectual energies of Scotland manifested in religious movements.. 82 

Naturalistic tendencies—George Combe. 83 

Heresies abounding. 84 



































CONTENTS. 


5 


PAGE 

Thomas Erskine—his character and friendships. 84 

His first book—emphasizing the subjective aspects of religion.. 87 

Further applications—criticism of his views. 91 

John Macleod Campbell—his ministry and doctrines. 94 

Prosecution—his defence. 97 

Edward Irving.100-103 

The anonymous “ True Plan of a Living Temple” and other works.. 104 

Deposition of their author, Mr. Wright, of Borthwick. 105 

Character and gains of this epoch. 106 

LECTURE V. 

THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 

Introductory—Religious thought outside the Church. 108 

Thomas Carlyle—Parentage and inherited characteristics. 109 

Early religious experience. Ill 

His “Conversion” (1821). 114 

Life at Hoddam Hill (1826). 115 

Marriage—Literary struggles. 117 

“ Sartor Resartus ”—Remarks on his style. 117 

Rectorial address (1865) and subsequent popularity. 119 

His characteristics and influence — 

(1.) As literary man.121-124 

His views on literature. 121 

Discovered a new literary tone and spirit. 121 

German literature—results.123 

(2.) As religious teacher.124-131 

Effect on individuals. 124 

Views on historic religions.- 125 

Explanation of his attitude towards Christianity. 126 

Insistence on a Divine order. 127 

Worship of Supreme force. 129 

Summary.130-131 

LECTURE VI. 

JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 

The upbringing of John Stuart Mill and that of Carlyle —a compar¬ 
ison and contrast. 132 

James Mill’s unbelief. 133 

John Stuart Mill—his early education. 136 

Subsequent logical training. 137 

The crisis of his life— his “Conversion ”. 140 

Modification in his opinions—Works. 141 

Criticism of the ground-assumption of his philosophy as affect¬ 
ing morals and religion. 144 

His special views ou religion. 149 

His contribution to religious thought. 152 





































6 


CONTENTS. 


PAGS 

George Grote—his want of spiritual experience. 154 

More a Millite than John Stuart Mill himself. 156 

G. H. Lewes—his philosophy. 157 

Character as a thinker.'157 

LECTURE VII. 

F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

Sceptical reaction from the Oxford movement. 159 

Francis Newman—Clough: Matthew Arnold’s poems. 160 

George Eliot and her circle. 160 

Extent of her hold on religion. 161 

Counter-influence—The “Broad” Church. 162 

The Maurice household—religious divergence. 162 

F. D. Maurice—his religious experience. 166 

Fundamental Principles of his religious creed — 

(1.) Principle of “ Universal Redemption ”. 167 

(2.) The desire for unity. 169 

His creed positive and dogmatic. 172 

The Maurice-Kingsley School, like the Cambridge Platonists, re¬ 
constructive and apologetic. 173 

Attitude assumed in his “Theological Essays”. 174 

His significance and work as a religious thinker. 176 

His life—connection with the Oxford movement. 177 

Charles Kingsley—his relations with Maurice. 178 

Intensely religious character of Maurice. 181 

Kingsley as a religious teacher. 182 

LECTURE VIII. 

F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 

Robertson—early life and opinions. 184 

Ministry at Winchester—asceticism. 185 

Geneva. 186 

Cheltenham—change of views. 187 

His spiritual struggles—the Tyrol... 189 

Brighton—power as a preacher. 191 

Characteristics as a preacher — 

(1.) Expansive intellectual faculty. 192 

(2.) Spiritual intensity. 194 

(3.) Sincerity and love of truth. 195 

His theological stand-point. 195 

His attitude towards dogma. 190 

Bishop Ewing—his religious characteristics.199-203 

Religious Thought since 1860.203-207 

Its scientific character. 204 

Fundamental questions. 204 

New spiritual movement—Dr. James Martineau.204 

Dean Stanley and Mr. Jowett. 206 

Concluding remarks. 207 









































MOVEMENTS 


RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

1820-1860. 


ST. GILES' LECTURES—FIFTH SERIES. 


I. 

COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 

I have undertaken to give in a course of eight lectures some ac¬ 
count of the Movements of Religious Thought in our country dur¬ 
ing the present century. As the subject is in any view a large one, 
and presents many aspects, it is important at the outset to indicate 
its exact character and the limits within which I propose to treat it. 

Our subject, then, is the Movements of Religious Thought—not of 
Religion—within the century. Religion is a wide word, with some 
meanings of which we have nothing to do. The expression “Re¬ 
ligious Thought ” may be also more or less widely interpreted; but 
on any interpretation it leaves outside much belonging to religion 
and its life and movement in the world. It leaves outside, for ex¬ 
ample, not only the large field of practical Christian action, but also 
that of ecclesiastical and politico-ecclesiastical parties. With these, 
properly speaking, we have nothing to do. It is only when their 
motif or spirit, as in the Oxford movement, is inextricably inter¬ 
twined with impulses of new or revived thought, that we touch 
upon them. 

A movement of religious thought implies the rise of some fresh 
life within the sphere of such thought—some new w T ave of opinion 
either within the Church, or deeply affecting it from without, mod¬ 
ifying its past conceptions. It is a moulding influence, leaving be¬ 
hind it definite traces, and working its way more or less into the 
national consciousness, so that this consciousness remains affected 
even if the movement itself disappears. It is this character which 






8 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


gives significance to our subject, and will be found to lend to it in¬ 
terest for all who are really concerned with religious questions and 
the progress of higher civilization. 

Thus definite in subject, our lectures are limited locally. The 
movements of which I am to speak are movements within our 
country alone. The large field of Continental criticism and specu¬ 
lation in matters of religion is not before us, although it may be 
impossible at times to refrain from stretching our view towards it. 

Further, our lectures run within definite chronological limits; 
and this claims particular notice. They have nothing to do with 
the last twenty-five years, or immediately preceding generation. 
They only reach to 1860 at the utmost, about which time a marked 
change took place in the current of philosophical and religious 
speculation; a change which may generally, and for our present 
purpose, be indicated by the word now so common — Evolution. 
New schools of thought have arisen in all directions, in philosophy, 
ethics, and theology, more or less affected by the idea which this 
word denotes. But all these schools in the mean time are beyond 
our scope. It was undesirable to attempt to embrace a more ex¬ 
tended field within one course of lectures; and my only fear is that 
the course will be found not too limited, but too diversified and 
ample. From Coleridge to John Stuart Mill, from Newman to 
Maurice, from Carlyle to Kingsley and Frederick Robertson, carries 
us so wide afield that we shall have to complain not of lack of ma¬ 
terial, but of an embarrassment of rich material. 

The interest and importance of the subject can hardly be doubted 
by any who understand it. The movements of religious thought 
in our own country lie at least very close to us and the life and 
work of all our churches. We cannot escape the influence of those 
movements whatever be our own position. Even those who most 
disown all connection with modern Thought are sometimes found 
strongly reflecting its influences—more frequently, perhaps, mistak¬ 
ing its real meaning. It seems to be the duty, therefore, of all in¬ 
telligent persons to try in some degree to understand the impulses 
moving their time. Such and such opinions, it is often said, are 
“in the air.” The thought of our own time, in its evolving phases 
or folds of varied hue, bathes us like an atmosphere. It wraps us 
round, penetrating often to our inmost sentiments. A certain class 
of minds remain indifferent—secure within their well-worn armor 
of traditionary prejudgment. Another class is apt to be carried 
away altogether, and lose their old moorings. But religious thought 
is happily not at the mercy of either of tlieSe classes. Rightly 
viewed, it is typified neither by tradition nor revolution. It is a 
continuous power in human life and history, moving onward with 


COLERIDGE AND IIIS SCHOOL. 


9 


the ever accumulating growths of human knowledge and of spirit¬ 
ual experience; ever new yet old; linking age to age, it is to be 
hoped, in happier and more benign intelligence. 

Let me further say that I do not mean to characterize what may 
be right or wrong in these movements. I only venture to describe 
them, and set them fairly before you as I myself understand them. 
Particularly my aim will be to show in a purely historical spirit 
how naturally they connect themselves with one another, and so 
far explain each other and themselves in the circumstances of their 
rise and course. I do not myself believe in movements of thought 
brought about by man’s device, nor in the application of such com¬ 
monplaces as “orthodox” and “heterodox” to the description of 
such movements. I believe in the continuous movement of the. 
Divine Spirit enlarging, correcting, and modifying human opinion. 

We speak of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as marking 
distinct phases of thought; but we have to remember that such 
classifications are conventional and so far inapplicable. The intel¬ 
lectual revival particularly identified with our century had begun 
before the close of the last century, and it was not till twenty years 
after our era commenced that anj r new movement can be traced in 
the sphere of religious thought. The flush of new insight and pas¬ 
sion, arising from the larger and closer study of Nature and Human¬ 
ity born of the French Revolution, poured itself forth in poetry 
long before the larger and intenser spirit of the time showed itself 
in other directions. It may be said that Wordsworth gave voice to 
a higher thought not only about nature but about religion. The 
“Solitary among the Mountains” is a preacher and not only a 
singer. He goes to the heart of religion and lays anew its founda¬ 
tion in the natural instincts of man. But while the poetry both of 
Wordsworth and Coleridge was instinct with a new life of religious 
feeling, and may be said to have given a new radiancy to its central 
principles,* it did not initiate any distinctive movement. In relig¬ 
ious opinions Wordsworth soon fell back upon, if he ever con¬ 
sciously departed from, the old lines of Anglican tradition. The 
vague pantheism of the “Excursion” implies rather a lack of dis¬ 
tinctive dogma than any fresh insight into religious problems or 
capacity of co-ordinating them in a new manner. And so soon as 
the need of definite religious conceptions came to the poet, the 
Church in her customary theology became his satisfactory refuge. 
The “Ecclesiastical Sonnets” mark this definite stage in his spirit¬ 
ual development. Wordsworth did for the religious thought of his 


* “Admiration, Hope, and Love.” See “The Excursion,” B. IV. 









10 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


time something more and better, perhaps, than giving it any definite 
impulse. While leaving it in the old channels he gave it a richer 
and deeper volume. He showed with what vital affinity religion 
cleaves to humanity in all its true and simple phases when uncon¬ 
taminated by conceit or frivolity. Nature and man alike were to 
him essentially religious, or only conceivable as the outcome of a 
Spirit of Life, “the Soul of all the worlds.”* Wordsworth in short 
remained, as he began, a poet. He did not enter into the sphere of 
religious thought or busy himself with its issues. 

Coleridge’s career presents a marked contrast to that of his friend. 
He may be said to have abandoned poetry just when Wordsworth 
in his quiet settlement at Grasmere (1799) was consecrating his life 
to it. Fellows in quickening the poetic revival of their time, they 
were soon widely separated in life and pursuit. Whether it be true, 
according to De Quincey, that Coleridge’s poetical power was killed 
by the habit of opium-eating, it is certainly true that ‘ ‘ the harp of 
Quantock ” f was never again struck save for a brief moment. The 
poet Coleridge passed into the lecturer and political and literary 
critic, and then, during the final period of his life, from 1816 to 
1834, into the philosopher and theologian. It is this latter period of 
his life that alone concerns us. 

I need not say how differently Coleridge has been estimated as a 
religious thinker. Carlyle’s caricature of the Sage as he sat “on 
the brow of Highgate Hill” in those years % is known to all; and a 
severely critical, but, as we must judge, superficial estimate has been 
lately given by Mr. Traill in the series of “English Men of Letters.” 


* “ The Excursion,” B. IX. 

t Not only “ The Ancient Mariner” and the first part of “ Christabel,” 
but also “Kubla Khan,” were composed at Nether Stowey, among the 
Quantock Hills, in 1797. The second part of “Christabel” belongs to 
the year 1800, and was written at Keswick, although not published till 
1816. Nothing of the same quality was ever produced by Coleridge, al¬ 
though he continued to write verses. 

% The value of Carlyle’s description may now be judged more fairly in 
the light of his own Life and Letters, and the indiscriminate and sav¬ 
age assaults which he has made on so many reputations. “It may be 
found,” said a reviewer of the “ Life of John Sterling” in the North Brit¬ 
ish Revieiv, Feb., 1852, with a prescient insight too unhappily realized by 
Mr. Froude’s biographic labors—“ It may be found, when the secrets of 
another Sanctuary are unveiled, that if there was not much ‘ pious ’ or 
‘partly courteous snuffle’ in the discourse there, there was yet in plenty 
‘a confused unintelligible flood of utterance threatening to swamp all 
known landmarks of thought and drown the world and us’—a vast vitu¬ 
perative commotion which made noise in the ear without bringing much 
light or life to the heart.” 



COLEBIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


11 


Our business is not so much to attempt any criticism of the value of 
Coleridge’s thought as to describe it as a new power. That it was 
such a power is beyond all question. It is not merely the testimony 
of such men as Archdeacon Hare and John Sterling, of Newman 
and of John Stuart Mill, but it is the fact that the later streams of 
religious thought m England are all more or less colored by his in¬ 
fluence. They flow m deeper and different channels since he lived. 
Not only are some of those streams directly traceable to him, and 
said to derive all their vitality from his principles, but those which 
are most opposed to him have been moulded more or less by the im¬ 
press of his religious genius. There was much in the man Cole¬ 
ridge himself to provoke animadversion; there may have been as¬ 
pects of his teaching that lend themselves to ridicule; but if a 
genius, seminal as his has been in the world of thought and of criti¬ 
cism as well as poetry, is not to excite our reverence, there is little 
that remains for us to reverence in the intellectual 'world. And 
when literature regains the higher tone of our earlier national life, 
the tone of 5ooker and of Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be 
again acknowledged, in Julius Hare’s words, as “a true sovereign 
of English thought.” He will take rank in the same line of spirit¬ 
ual genius. He has the same elevation of feeling, the same pro¬ 
found grasp of moral and spiritual ideas, the same wide range of 
vision. He has, in short, the same love of wisdom, the same insight, 
the same largeness—never despising nature or art or literature for 
the sake of religion, still less ever despising religion for the sake of 
culture. In reading over Coleridge’s prose works again, especially 
his “Aids to Reflection” and his “Confessions of an Inquiring 
Spirit ”—returning to them after a long past familiarity—I am par¬ 
ticularly struck with their massive and large intellectuality, akin to 
our older Elizabethan literature. There is a constant play of great 
power, of imagination as well as reason, of spiritual insight as well 
as logical subtlety. 

To speak of Coleridge as an eminently healthy writer in the high¬ 
er regions of thought may seem absurd to some who think mainly 
of his life, and the fatal failure which characterized it. It is the 
shadow of this failure of manliness in his conduct, as in that of his 
life-long friend Charles Lamb, which no doubt prompted the great 
genius who carried manliness, if little sweetness, from his Annan- 
dale home, to paint both the one and the other in such darkened 
colors. We have not a word to say on behalf of the failings of 
either. They were deplorable and unworthy; but it is the fact not¬ 
withstanding that the minds of both retained a serenity and a cer¬ 
tain touch of respectfulness which are lacking in their Scottish 
cotemporary. They were both finer-edged than Carlyle. They in- 




12 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


herited a more delicate and polite personal culture; and delicacy 
can never be far distant from true manliness. Neither of them 
could have written of the treasures of old religion as Carlyle did in 
his Life of Sterling; whether they accepted for themselves these 
treasures or not, they would have spared the tender faith of others, 
and respected an ancient Ideal. And be sure, this is the higher at¬ 
titude. Nothing which has ever deeply interested humanity, or 
profoundly moved it, is treated with contempt by a wise and good 
man. It may call for and deserve rejection, but never insult. Un¬ 
happily this attitude of mind, reserved as well as critical, reverent 
as well as bold, has been conspicuously absent in some of the most 
powerful and best-known writers of our era. 

The “ Aids to Reflection ” summon us, both by title and contents, 
to thoughtfulness. It is a book which none but a thinker on Divine 
things will ever like. It is such a book as all such thinkers have 
prized. To ihany it has given a new force of religious insight, 
while for its time, beyond all doubt, it created a real epoch in Chris¬ 
tian thought. It did this certainly not from any merits as a liter¬ 
ary composition, for it is fragmentary throughout; and the thought 
of the volume is nowhere wrought into a complete system. But it 
had life in it; and the living seed, scattered and desultory as it was, 
brought forth fruit in many minds. 

The Evangelical movement, which in the last century kindled so 
many hearts, and wrought such living Christian energy in many 
lives, survived into the present century under the vigorous guidance 
of Wilberforce and Simeon of Cambridge. It was still active, liv¬ 
ing, and powerful, although it had lost its first freshness. Nor'was 
the Anglican tradition, as personified in men like Keble, so weak as 
has been sometimes assumed. There was more quiet and effective 
religion throughout the land than our generalizations sometimes 
allow; witness, for example, among the Unitarians such a man as 
Frederick Maurice’s father. There was, however, a lack of earnest 
movement save in the Evangelical direction. The testimony of 
Newman in England, the career of Chalmers in Scotland, may be I 
held as evidence of this. From the Evangelical Succession—Wil- ! 
berforce on the one side, and Romaine and Thomas Scott on the 
other—came the first impulses which in the second decade of our 
century moved these great minds. Evangelicalism was, in short, 
the only type of aggressive religion then, or for some time, prevail- ! 
ing, although its aggressiveness was more of a practical than of an 
intellectual kind. Intellectually there was little or no directing 
power in the sphere of religion. In the course of the next fifteen 
years, or onward from 1810 to 1880, there sprang up a great va¬ 
riety of new influences: Whately and Arnold in England, Thomas 




COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


IB 




Erskine in Scotland, Newman and the whole Anglo-Catholic host 
some years later. We shall have occasion to advert to all. But the 
movement which sprang from Coleridge claims our first attention. 
It stands upon the whole in advance of the others. It has been the 
most fertile and pervasive. All the other movements may be said 
to have borrowed more or less from Coleridge. Whatever he bor¬ 
rowed was from Germany, or from long-past sources of our own 
literature. 

What, then, were the characteristics of the Coleridgian move¬ 
ment? In what respects is it true that Coleridge gave a definite im¬ 
pulse to the religious thought of his time? In three respects, as it 
appears to us: 1st, by a renovation of current Christian ideas; 2d, 
by an advance in Biblical study; and, 3d, by an enlarged conception 
of the Church. 

(1.) Coleridge, we know, was a man of many ambitions never re¬ 
alized ; but of all his ambitions, the most persistent was that of lay¬ 
ing anew the foundations of spiritual philosophy. This was “ the 
great work” to which he frequently alluded as having given “the 
preparation of more than twenty years of his life.”* Like other 
great tasks projected by him, it was very imperfectly accomplished; 
and there will always be those in consequence who fail to under¬ 
stand his influence as a leader of thought. We are certainly not 
bound to take Coleridge at his own value, nor to attach the same 
importance as he did to some of his speculations. He failed to do 
justice to them in more senses than one. Nor can Mr. Green’s vol¬ 
umes, reverent and studious as they are, be taken in place of an 
adequate exposition by the author himself. His more abstract spec¬ 
ulations, we confess, do not much interest us. It has indeed been 
said that Coleridge’s speculative philosophy lies at the foundation 
of all his theology.f This may be so; to a large extent it is so; but 
no one knew better than Coleridge himself that there was nothing 
new in his Platonic realism. It was merely a restoration of the 
old religious metaphysic which had preceded “ the mechanical sys¬ 
tems,” % which became dominant in the reign of Charles the Second. 
He himself constantly claims to do nothing more than re-assert the 
principles of Hooker, of Henry More, of John Smith, and Leigh¬ 
ton, all of whom he speaks of as “Platonizing divines !” But the 
religious teaching of Coleridge came upon his generation as a new 


* “Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the Teaching of the late Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge.” By Jos. Henry Green, F.R.S., D.C.L. 1865. 

t This idea is elaborated in a clever, but somewhat narrow book, 
“Modern Anglican Theology,” by the Rev. James H. Rigg. 1857. 

% See particularly his own statement. 




14 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


breath, not merely or mainly because he revived these ancient prin¬ 
ciples, but because he vitalized anew their application to Christian¬ 
ity, so as to transform it from a mere creed, or collection of articles, 
into a living mode of thought, embracing all human activity. 

Coleridge is misjudged when looked upon as a mere theosophic 
dreamer or ontologist. His Transcendentalism, borrowed from Kant 
and Schelling, his famous distinction of the Reason and the Under¬ 
standing, his speculative analysis of the Trinitarian idea, are not 
without their significance; but these were not the factors that made 
his teaching influential. Coleridge was no mere metaphysician. . 
He was a great interpreter of spiritual facts—a student of spiritual 
life, quickened by a peculiarly vivid and painful experience; and he ' 
saw in Christianity, rightly conceived, at once the true explanation 
of the facts of our spiritual being, and the true remedy for their dis¬ 
order. He brought human nature, in all the breadth of its activi- 1 
ties, once more near to Christianity, and found in the latter not 
merely a means of salvation in any limited evangelical sense, but 
the highest Truth and Health — a perfect Philosophy. His main 
power lay in this subjective direction, just as here it was that his 
age was most needing stimulus and guidance. 

The Evangelical School, with all its merits, had conceived of 
Christianity rather as something superadded to the highest life of 
humanity than as the perfect development of that life ; as a scheme 
for human salvation authenticated by miracles, and, so to speak, in¬ 
terpolated into human history rather than a divine philosophy, wit¬ 
nessing to itself from the beginning in all the higher phases of that 
history. And so Philosophy, and no less Literature and Art and 
Science, were conceived apart from religion. The world and the 
Church were not only antagonistic in the biblical sense, as the em¬ 
bodiments of the Carnal and the Divine Spirit—which they must 
ever be—but they were, so to speak, severed portions of life divided 
by outward signs and badges; and those who joined the one or the 
other were supposed to be clearly marked off. All who know the 
writings of the Evangelical School of the eighteenth and earlier 
part of the nineteenth century, from the poetry of Cowper and the 
letters of his friend Newton, to the writings of Romaine, John Fos¬ 
ter, and Wilberforce, and even Chalmers, will know how such com¬ 
monplaces everywhere re-appear in them. That they were associ¬ 
ated with the most devout and beautiful lives, that they even served 
to foster a peculiar ardor of Christian feeling and love of God, 
cannot be disputed. But they were essentially narrow and false. 
They destroyed the largeness and unity of human experience. 
They not merely separated religion from art and philosophy, but 
they tended to separate it from morality. 



COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


15 


Coleridge’s most distinctive work was to restore the broken har¬ 
mony between reason and religion by enlarging the conception of 
both, but of the latter especially—by showing how man is essen¬ 
tially a religious being having a definite spiritual constitution, 
apart from which the very idea of religion becomes impossible. 
Religion is not therefore something brought to man; it is his high¬ 
est education. Religion, he says, was designed “to improve the 
nature and faculties of man, in order to the right governing of our 
actions, to the securing the peace and progress, external and inter¬ 
nal, of individuals and of communities.”* Christianity is in the 
highest degree adapted to this end ; and nothing can be a part of it 
that is not duly proportioned thereto. 

In thus vindicating the rationality of religion, Coleridge had a 
twofold task before him, as every such thinker has. He had to as¬ 
sert against the Epicurean and Empirical School the spiritual con¬ 
stitution of human nature, and against the fanatical or hyperevan¬ 
gelical school the reasonable working of spiritual influence. He 
had to maintain, on the one hand, the essential divinity of man, 
that ‘ ‘ there is more in him than can be rationally referred to the 
life of nature and the mechanism of organization,” and on the other 
hand to show that this higher life of the spirit is throughout ra¬ 
tional—that it is superstition and not true religion which professes 
to resolve “men’s faith and practice” into the illumination of such 
a spirit as they can give no account of—such as does not enlighten 
their reason or enable them to render their doctrine intelligible to 
others. He fights, in short, alike against materialistic negation and 
credulous enthusiasm. 

The former he meets with the assertion of “a spirituality in 
mana self-power or Will at the root of all his being. “If there 
be aught spiritual in man, the will must be such. If there be a 
will, there must be a spirituality in man.” He assumes both posi¬ 
tions, seeing clearly—what all who radically deal with .such a ques¬ 
tion must see—that it becomes in the end an alternative postulate 
on one side and the other. The theologian cannot prove his case, 
because the very terms in which it must be proved are already de¬ 
nied ab initio by the materialist. But no more can the materialist, 
for the same reason, refute the spiritual thinker There can be no 
argument where no common premise is granted. Coleridge was 
quite alive to this, yet he validly appeals to common experience. 
“I assume,” he says, “a something the proof of which no man can 
give to another, yet every man may find for himself If any man 
assert that he has no such experience,! am bound to disbelieve him; 


* “Aids to Reflection” (ed. 1848), vol. i., p. 143. 




16 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


I cannot do otherwise without unsettling the foundation of my own 
moral nature. For I either find it as an essential of the humanity 
common to him and to me, or I have not found it at all. . . . All 
the significant objections of the materialist and necessitarian,” he 
adds, ‘ ‘ are contained in the term morality, and all the objections of 
the infidel in the term religion. These very terms imply something 
granted, which the objector in each case supposes not granted. A 
moral philosophy is only such because it assumes a principle of 
morality, a will in man, and so a Christian philosophy or theology 
has its own assumptions resting on three ultimate facts, namely, the 
reality of the law of conscience; the existence of a responsible will 
as the subject of that law; and lastly, the existence of God.” . . . 

‘ ‘ The first is a fact of consciousness; the second, a fact of reason 
necessarily concluded from the first; and the third, a fact of history 
interpreted by both.” 

These were the radical data of the religious philosophy of Cole¬ 
ridge. They imply a general conception of religion which was 
revolutionary for his age, simple and ancient as the principles are. 
The evangelical tradition brought religion to man from the outside. 
It took no concern of man’s spiritual constitution beyond the fact 
that he was a sinner and in danger of hell. Coleridge started from 
a similar but larger experience, including not only sin, but the 
whole spiritual basis on which sin rests. “I profess a deep con¬ 
viction,” he says, “that man is a fallen creature,” “not by accident 
of bodily constitution or any other cause, but as diseased in his will 
—in that will which is the true and only strict synonyme of the 
word I, or the intelligent Self.” This “ intelligent self” is a funda¬ 
mental conception lying at the root of his system of thought. Sin 
is an attribute of it, and cannot be conceived apart from it, and 
conscience, or the original sense of right and wrong, governing the 
will. Apart from these internal realities there is no religion, and 
the function of the Christian Revelation is to build up the spiritual 
life out of these realities—to remedy the evil, to enlighten the con¬ 
science, to educate the will. This effective power of religion comes 
directly from God in Christ. 

Here Coleridge joins the Evangelical School, as indeed every 
school of living Christian Faith. This was the element of truth he 
found in the doctrine of Election as handled “ practically, morally, 
humanly,” by Leighton. Every true Christian, he argues, must at¬ 
tribute his distinction not in any degree to himself—“his own re¬ 
solves and strivings,” “his own will and understanding,” still less 
to “his own comparative-excellence”—but to God, “the Being in 
whom the promise of life originated, and on whom its fulfilment 
depends.” Election so far is a truth of experience. “This the 


COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


17 


conscience requires; this the highest interests of morality demand.” 
So far it is a question of facts with which the speculative reason 
has nothing to do. But when the theological reasoner abandons 
the ground of fact and “the safe circle of religion and practical 
reason for the shifting sand-wastes and mirages of speculative the¬ 
ology”—then he uses words without meaning. He can have no 
insight into the workings or plans of a Being who is neither an 
object of his senses nor a part of his self-consciousness. 

Nothing can show better than this brief exposition how closely 
Coleridge in his theology clung to a base of spiritual experience, 
and sought to measure even the most abstruse Christian mysteries 
by facts. The same thing may be shown by referring to his doc¬ 
trine of the Trinity, which has been supposed the most transcen¬ 
dental and, so to speak, “ Neo-Platonist ” of all his doctrines. But 
truly speaking, his Trinitarianism like his doctrine of Election is a 
moral rather than a speculative truth. The Trinitarian idea was 
indeed true to him notionally. The full analysis of the notion 
“God” seemed to him to involve it. “I find a certain notion in 
my mind, and say that is what I understand by the term God. 
From books and conversation I find that the learned generally con¬ 
nect the same notion with the same word. I then apply the rules 
laid down by the masters of logic for the involution and evolution 
of terms, and prove (to as many as agree with my premises) that the 
notion ‘God’ involves the notion ‘Trinity.’” So he argued, and 
many times recurred to the same Transcendental analysis. But the 
truer and more urgent spiritual basis of the doctrine of the Trinity, 
even to his own mind, was not its notional but its moral necessity. 
Christ could only be a Saviour as being Divine. Salvation is a Di¬ 
vine work, “ The idea of Redemption involves belief in the Divin¬ 
ity of our Lord. And our Lord’s Divinity again involves the Trin¬ 
itarian idea, because in and through this idea alone the Divinity of 
Christ can be received without breach of faith in the Unity of the 
Godhead.” In other words, the best evidence of the doctrine of the 
Trinity is the compulsion of the spiritual conscience which demands 
a Divine Saviour; and only in and through the great idea of Trinity 
in Unity does this demand become consistent with Christian Mono¬ 
theism.* 

* This was a favorite thought with Coleridge, as, for example, in his 
“Literary Remains ” (vol. i., pp. 393-4): “ The Trinity of Persons in the 
Unity of the Godhead would have been a necessary idea of my speculative 
reason. God must have had co-eternally an adequate idea of Himself in 
and through which He created all things. But this would have been a mere 
speculative idea. Solely in consequence of our redemption does the Trinity be¬ 
come a doctrine, the belief of which as real is commanded by conscience,” 

2 



18 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


These doctrines are merely used in illustration, as they are by 
Coleridge himself in his “Aids to Reflection.” We do not dwell 
upon them. But nothing can show in a stronger light the general 
character of the change which he wrought in the conception of 
Christianity. From being a mere traditional creed, with Anglican 
and Evangelical, and it may be added Unitarian, alike, it became a 
living expression of the spiritual consciousness. In a sense, of course, 
it had always been so. The Evangelical made much of its living 
power, but only in a practical and not in a rational sense. It is the 
distinction of Coleridge to have once more in his age made Christian 
doctrine alive to the Reason as well as the Conscience—tenable as a 
philosophy as well as an evangel. And this he did by interpreting 
Christianity in the light of our moral and spiritual life. There are 
aspects of Christian truth beyond us. Exeunt in mysteria. But all 
Christian truth must have vital touch with our spiritual being, and 
be so far at least capable of being rendered in its terms, or, in other 
words, be conformable to reason. 

There was nothing absolutely new in this luminous conception; 
but it marked a revolution of religious thought in the earlier part of 
our century. The great principle of the Evangelical Theology was 
that theological dogmas were true or false without any reference to 
a subjective standard of judgment. They were true as pure data of 
Revelation, or as the propositions of an authorized creed settled long 
ago. Reason had, so far, nothing to do with them. Christian truth, 
it was supposed, lay at hand in the Bible, an appeal to which settled 
everything. Coleridge did not undervalue the Bible. He gave it 
an intelligent reverence. But he no less reverenced the spiritual 
consciousness or Divine light in man; and to put out this light, as 
the Evangelical had gone far to do, was to destroy all reasonable 
faith. This must rest not merely on objective data, but on internal 
experience. It must have not merely authority without, but ration¬ 
ale within. It must answer to the highest aspiration of human rea¬ 
son, as well as the most urgent necessities of human life. It must 
interpret reason and find expression in the voice of our higher hu¬ 
manity, and so enlarge itself as to meet all its needs. 

If we turn for a moment to the special exposition of the doctrines 
of Sin and Redemption which Coleridge has given in the “Aids to 
Reflection,” it is still mainly with the view of bringing out more 
clearly his general conception of Christianity as a living movement 
of thought rather than a mere series of articles or a traditionary 
creed. 

In dealing first with the question of sin he shows how its very 
idea is only tenable on the ground of such a spiritual constitution 
in man as he has already asserted. It is only the recognition of a 


COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


19 


true will in man—a spirit or supernatural in man, although ‘ ‘ not 
necessarily miraculous ”—which renders sin possible. ‘ ‘ These views 
of the spirit and of the will as spiritual,” he says more than once, 
“are the groundwork of my scheme.” There was nothing more 
significant or fundamental in all his theology. If there is not al¬ 
ways a supernatural element in man in the shape of spirit and will, 
no miracles or anything else can ever authenticate the supernatural 
to him. A mere formal orthodoxy, therefore, hanging upon the evi¬ 
dence of miracles, is a suspension bridge without any real support. 
So all questions between Infidelity and Christianity are questions 
here at the root, and not what are called “critical” questions as to 
whether this or that view of the Bible be right, or this or that tradi¬ 
tionary dogma be true. Such questions are, truly speaking, inter- 
Christian questions, the freest views of which all churches must 
learn to tolerate. The really vital question is whether there is a 
divine root in man at all—a spiritual centre answering to a higher 
spiritual centre in the universe. All controversies of any impor¬ 
tance come back to this. Coleridge would have been a great Chris¬ 
tian thinker if for no other reason than this, that he brought all the¬ 
ological problems back to this living centre, and showed how they 
diverged from it. Apart from this postulate, sin was inconceivable 
to him; and in the same manner all sin was to him sin of origin or 
“original sin.” It is the essential property of the will that it can 
originate. The phrase original sin is therefore “a pleonasm.” If 
sin was not original, or from within the will itself, it would not de¬ 
serve the name. “A state or act that has not its origin in the will 
may be a calamity, deformity, disease, or mischief; but a sin it can¬ 
not be.” 

We may be pardoned for adducing a still longer illustration of his 
mode of argument. “A moral evil is an evil that has its origin in 
will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. 
ut the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in conscience 
:o admit; and that there is an evil common to all is a fact, and this 
evil must therefore have a common ground. Now this evil ground 
cannot originate in the Divine will; it must therefore be referred to 
the will of man. And this evil ground we call original sin. It is a 
• mystery, that is a fact which we see but cannot explain, and the doc¬ 
trine a truth which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor 
communicate. And such by the quality of the subject (namely, a 
responsible will) it must be, if it be truth at all.” 

This inwardness is no less characteristic of Coleridge’s treatment 
of the doctrine of Atonement or Redemption. It is intelligible so 
far as it comes within the range of spiritual experience, just as the 
i doctrine of sin is. So far, its nature and effects are amply described 







20 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


or figured in the New Testament, especially by St. Paul. And the 
apostle’s language, as might be expected, “takes its predominant 
colors from his own experience, and the experience of those whom 
he addressed. ” ‘ ‘ His figures, images, analogies, and references ” 

are all more or less borrowed from this source. He describes the 
Atonement of Christ under four principal metaphors: 1. Sin-offer¬ 
ings, sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, atonement, KaraWayri. 

3. Redemption, or ransom from slavery. 4. Satisfaction, payment 
of a debt. These phrases are not designed to convey to us all the 
Divine meaning of the Atonement, for no phrases or figures can do 
this; but they set forth its general aspects and design in so far as 
we, no less than the jews and Greeks of the time, are interested in 
the doctrine. One and all they have an intelligible relation to our 
spiritual life, and so clothe the doctrine for us with a concrete liv¬ 
ing and practical meaning. But there are other relations and as¬ 
pects of the doctrine of Atonement that transcend experience, and 
consequently our powers of understanding. And all that can be i 
said here is, Exit in mysleria. The rationalism of Coleridge is at 
least a modest and self-limiting rationalism. It clears the ground 
within the range of spiritual experience, and floods this ground with 
the light of reason. There is no true doctrine that can contradict 
this light, or shelter itself from its penetration. But there are as¬ 
pects of Christian doctrine that outreach all grasp of reason, and 
before which reason must simply be silent. For example, the Di¬ 
vine Act in Redemption is “a Causative Act—a spiritual and tran¬ 
scendent mystery that passeth all understanding. ‘ Who knoweth the 
mind of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath instructed himV Fac¬ 
tum est. ” This is all that can be said of the mystery of Redemption, 
or of the doctrine of Atonement, on its Divine side. 

And here emerges another important principle of the Coleridgian 
Theology. While so great an advocate of the rights of reason in 
theology, of the necessity, in other words, of moulding all its facts 
in a synthesis intelligible to the higher reason, he recognizes strong¬ 
ly that there is a province of Divine truth beyond all such construc¬ 
tion. We can never understand the fulness of Divine mystery, and 
it is hopeless to attempt to do so. While no mind was less agnostic 
in the modern sense of the term, he was yet, with all his vivid and 
large intuition, a Christian agnostic. Just because Christianity was 
Divine, a revelation, and not a mere human tradition, all its higher 
doctrines ended in a region beyond our clear knowledge. As he him¬ 
self said, “If the doctrine is more than a hyperbolical phrase, it 
must do so.” There was great pregnancy in this as in his other con¬ 
ceptions ; and probably no more significant change awaits the theol¬ 
ogy of the future than the recognition of this province of the uu- 




COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


21 


known, and the cessation of controversy as to matters which come 
within it, and therefore admit of no dogmatic settlement. 

(2.) But it is more than time to turn to the second aspect, in which 
Coleridge appears as a religious leader of the thought of the nine¬ 
teenth century. The “Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit” were 
not published till six years after his death, in 1840; and it is curious 
to notice their accidental connection with the “Confessions of a 


Beautiful Soul,’’which had been translated by Carlyle some years 
before.* These “ Confessions,” in the shape of seven letters to a 
friend, gather together all that is valuable in the Biblical Criticism 
of the author scattered through his various writings; and although 
it may be doubtful whether the volume has ever attained the circu¬ 
lation of the “Aids to Reflection,” it is eminently deserving—small 
as it is, nay, because of its very brevity—of a place beside the larger 
work. It is eminently readable, terse and nervous, as well as elo¬ 
quent in style. In none of his writings does Coleridge appear to 
greater advantage, or touch a more elevating strain, rising at times 
into solemn music. 

The “Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit” were of course merely 
one indication of the rise of a true spirit of criticism in English the¬ 
ology. Arnold, Whately, Thirlwall, and others, it will be seen, were 
all astir in the same direction, even before the “Confessions” were 
published. The notion of verbal inspiration, or the infallible dicta¬ 
tion of Holy Scripture, could not possibly continue after the modern 
spirit of historical inquiry had begun. As soon as men plainly rec¬ 
ognized the organic growth of all great facts, literary as well as 
others, it was inevitable that they should see the Scriptures in a new 
light, as a product of many phases of thought in course of more or 
less perfect development. A larger and* more intelligent sense of 
the conditions attending the origin and progress of all civilization, 
and of the immaturities through which religious as well as moral 
and social ideas advance, necessarily carried with it a changed per¬ 
ception of the characteristics of Scriptural revelation. The old 
Rabbinical notion of an infallible text was sure to disappear. The 
new critical method, besides, is in Coleridge’s hands rather an idea 
—a happy and germinant thought — than a well-evolved system. 
Still to him belongs the honor of having first plainly and boldly 
announced that the Scriptures were to be read and studied, like any 
other literature, in the light of their continuous growth, and the 
adaptation of their parts to one another. 

The divinity of Scripture appears all the more brightly when thus 
freely handled. “ I take up this work,” he says, “with the purpose 


* In his well-known translation of “Wilhelm Meister.” 





22 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


to read it for the first time as I should read any other work—as far 
at least as I can or dare. For I neither can, nor dare, throw off a 
strong and awful prepossession in its favor—certain as I am that a 
large part of the light and life in and by which I see, love, and em-. 
brace the truths and the strengths co-organized into a living body 
of faith and knowledge has been directly or indirectly derived to me 
from this sacred volume.” All the more reason why we should not 
make a fetich of the Bible, as the Turk does of the Koran. Poor 
as reason may be in comparison with ‘ ‘ the power and splendor of 
the Scriptures,” yet it is and must be for him a true light. “While 
there is a Light higher than all, even the Word that was in the be¬ 
ginning —the Light, of which light itself is but the shechinali and 
cloudy tabernacle”—there is also a “Light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world;” and the spirit of man is declared to be 
“ the candle of the Lord.” “If between this Word,” he says, “ and 
the written Letter I shall anywhere seem to myself to find a dis¬ 
crepance, I will not conclude that such there actually is; nor, on the 
other hand, will I fall under the condemnation of them that would 
lie for God , but seek as I may, be thankful for what I have — and 
wait.” 

Such is the key-note of the volume. The supremacy of the Bible 
as a divinely inspired literature is plainly recognized from the first. 
Obviously it is a book above all other books in which deep answers 
to deep, and our inmost thoughts and most hidden griefs find not 
merely response, but guidance and assuagement. And whatever 
there finds us, “bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from 
the Holy Spirit.” “In the Bible,” he says again, “there is more 
that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put to¬ 
gether; the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my be¬ 
ing; and whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence 
of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit. ” 

But there is much in the Bible that not only does not find us in 
the Coleridgian sense, but that seems full of contradictions, both 
moral and historical; the psalms in which David curses his enemies; 
the obviously exaggerated ages attributed to the patriarchs; and the 
incredible number of the armies said to be collected by Abijah and 
Jeroboam (2 Chron. xiii. 3), and other instances familiar to all stu¬ 
dents of Scripture. What is to be made of such features of the 
Bible? According to the old notion of its infallibility, such parts 
of Scripture, no less than its most elevating utterances of ‘ ‘ lovely 
hymn and choral song and accepted prayers of saint and prophet,” 
were to be received as dictated by the Holy Spirit. They were 
stamped with the same Divine authority. Coleridge rightly enough 
emphasizes this view as that of the Fathers and Reformers alike; 


COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


23 


but be no less rightly points out that not one of them is consistent 
in holding to their general doctrine. Their treatment of the Script¬ 
ures in detail constantly implies the fallacy of the Kabbinical tradi¬ 
tion to which they yet clung. He no less forcibly points out that 
the Scriptures themselves make no such pretension to infallibility, 
“ explicitly or by implication.” “ On the contrary, they refer to old¬ 
er documents, and on all points express themselves as sober-minded 
and veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known to 
do.” The usual texts quoted, such as 2 Tim. iii., 16, have no real 
bearing on the subject. The little we know as to the origin and 
history of many of the books of the Bible, of “ the time of the for¬ 
mation and closing of the canon,” of its selectors and compilers, 
is all opposed to such a theory. Moreover, the very nature of 
the claim stultifies itself when examined. For “how can infal¬ 
lible truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible expres¬ 
sion?” 

But it may be asked, as it has been often asked, where is this 
selective process to stop? If the Bible as a whole is not infallibly 
inspired, how are we to know what is of Divine authority and what 
is not? The only answer to such a question is the answer of com¬ 
mon-sense given in all other cases. The higher thought and power 
of any writing is self-revealing. It is not to be mistaken. It takes 
captive the reason as well as the conscience. If I speak enthusi¬ 
astically of Shakespeare, and of the well - nigh divine wisdom of 
many of his plays, do I thereby receive all that Shakespeare writes 
as elevating or good? Do I pronounce any opinion as to the 
question respecting Titus Andronicus, or the larger portion of the 
three parts of Henry VI. ? Shakespeare in ordinary speech stands 
for the unity of genius which his works represent. In this is also 
to be found the true explanation of the words of our Lord in speak¬ 
ing of Moses and the prophets. In using such expressions our Lord 
does not mean to indicate any opinion of the authenticity of the 
books of Moses, or of the infallible authority of all contained in the 
Old Testament, but only to appeal to the unity of Divine light 
which the Jews themselves recognized in the Holy Scriptures. 
They owned a Divine authority contained in certain writings. 
Moses was par excellence their Divine teacher. If only they had 
understood their own Scriptures, they would have known that 
Moses spake of Him. The argument thus used by our Lord was 
conclusive. In the light of their own belief it left no escape to 
them, and this was beyond doubt all that our Lord meant by such 
an appeal. To suppose that he implied further that there can be 
no doubt that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch as a whole, or 
that every word of it was dictated by God to Moses, is to suppose 




24 MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

something not only absurd in itself, but utterly irrelevant to the 
purpose in view. So in effect Coleridge argued, and with a force as 
irresistible as it was new in his day. 

But if the tenet of verbal inspiration has been so long received 
and acted on “by Jew and Christian, Greek, Roman, and Protestant, 
why can it not now be received?” “For every reason,” answered 
Coleridge,“that makes me prize and revere these Scriptures; prize 
them, love them, revere them beyond all other books.” Because 
such a tenet “falsifies at once the whole body of holy writ, with all 
its harmonious and symmetrical gradations.” It turns “ the breath¬ 
ing organism into a colossal Memnon’s head, a hollow passage for a 
voice,” which no man hath uttered, and no human heart hath con¬ 
ceived. It evacuates of all sense and efficacy the fact that the Bible 
is a Divine literature of many books ‘ * composed in different and 
widely distant ages, under the greatest diversity of circumstances, 
and degrees of light and information.” So he argues in language I 
have partly quoted and partly summarized. And then he breaks 
forth into a magnificent passage about the song of Deborah—a pas¬ 
sage of rare eloquence with all its desultoriness, but which will hard¬ 
ly bear separation from the context. The wail of the Jewish her¬ 
oine’s maternal and patriotic love is heard under all her cursing and 
individualism—mercy rejoicing against judgment. In the very in¬ 
tensity of her primary affections is found the rare strength of her 
womanhood, and sweetness lies near to fierceness. Such passages 
probably give us a far better idea of the occasional glory of the old 
man’s talk, as “he sat on the brow of Highgate Hill,” than any poor 
fragments that have been preserved. Direct and to the point it may 
never have been, but at times it rose into an organ swell with snatches 
of unutterable melody and power. 

The conclusion of the whole is that the divinity of Scripture re¬ 
sides not in the letter but in the spirit, in the unity of Divine impres¬ 
sion which they convey. And historical criticism has precisely the 
same task in reference to the Bible as any other collection of ancient 
and sacred writings. An undevout criticism will no doubt blunder 
and misinterpret, as an ungenial and inappropriate criticism must 
always do in every direction. But a false can only be corrected by 
a true criticism, and a narrow and meagre rationalism by a profound 
and enlightened sacred learning, capable of understanding the depths 
of the spiritual life, while rigorously testing all its conclusions and 
processes of development, both moral and historical, intellectual and 
ethical. 

(3.) But Coleridge contributed still another factor to the impulsion 
of religious thought in his time. He did much to revive the historic 
idea of the Church as an intellectual as well as a spiritual common- 


COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL, 


25 


Wealth. Like many other ideas of our older national life, this had 
been depressed and lost sight of during the eighteenth century. The 
evangelical party, deficient in learning generally, was especially de¬ 
ficient in breadth of historical knowledge. Milner’s History, if noth¬ 
ing else, serves to point this conclusion. The idea of the Church as 
the mother of philosophy and arts and learning, as well as the nurse 
of faith and piety, was unknown. It was a part of the evangelical 
creed, moreover, to leave aside as far as possible mere political and 
intellectual interests. These belonged to the world, and the main 
business of the religious man was with religion as a personal affair, 
of vast moment, but outside all other affairs. Coleridge helped once 
more to bring the Church, as he did the Gospel, into larger room as 
a great spiritual power of manifold influence. 

The volume “On the Constitution of Church and State according 
to the Idea of each” was published in 1830, and was the last volume 
which the author himself published. The Catholic emancipation 
question had greatly excited the public mind, and some friend had 
appealed to Coleridge, expressing astonishment that he should be in 
oppositiori to the proposed measure. He replied that he is by no 
means unfriendly to Catholic emancipation, while yet “ scrupling 
the means proposed for its attainment.” And in order to explain 
his difficulties he composed a long letter to his friend, which is really 
an essay or treatise, beginning with the fundamental principles of 
his philosophy and ending with a description of antichrist. The 
essay is one of the least satisfactory of his compositions from a mere 
literary point of view, and is not even mentioned by Mr. Traill in 
his recent monograph. But amid all its involutions and ramblings 
it is stimulating and full of thought on a subject which almost more 
than any other is liable to be degraded by unworthy and sectarian 
treatment. Here, as everywhere in Coleridge’s writings, we are 
brought in contact with certain large conceptions which far more 
than cover the immediate subject in hand. 

It has been sometimes supposed that Coleridge’s theory of the 
Church merely revived the old theory of the Elizabethan age, so 
powerfully advocated by Hooker and specially espoused by Dr. Ar¬ 
nold in later times. According to this theory the Church and State 
are really identical, the Church being merely the State in its educa¬ 
tional and religious aspect and organization. But Coleridge’s special 
theory is different from this, although allied to it. He distinguishes 
the Christian Church as such from any national Church. The for¬ 
mer is spiritual and catholic, the latter institutional and local. The 
former is opposed to the “world,” the latter is an estate of the realm. 
The former has nothing to do with States and kingdoms. It is in 
this respect identical with the “ spiritual and invisible Church known 



26 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


only to the Father of Spirits,” and the compensating counterpoise * 
of all that is of the world. It is, in short, the Divine aggregate of 
what is really divine in all Christian communities, and more or less 
ideally represented “in every true Church.” A national Church, 
again, is the incorporation of all the learning and knowledge—intel- J 
lectual and spiritual—in a country. Every nation, in order to its 
true health and civilization, requires not only a land-owning or per¬ 
manent class along with a commercial, industrial, and progressive ; 
class, but, moreover, an educative class to represent all higher knowl¬ 
edge, “to guard the treasures of past civilization,” to bind the na¬ 
tional life together in its past, present, and future, and to communi¬ 
cate to all citizens a clear understanding of their rights and duties. 
This third estate of the realm Coleridge denominated the “Clerisy,” 
and included not merely the clergy, but, in his own language, ‘ ‘ the 
learned of all denominations.” The knowledge which it was their 
function to cultivate and diffuse, embraced not only theology, al¬ 
though this pre-eminently as the head of all other knowledge, but 
law, music, mathematics, the physical sciences—“all the so-called 
liberal arts and sciences, the possession and cultivation of which 
constitute the civilization of a country. ” 

This is, at any rate, a large conception of a national Church. It 
is put forth by its author with all earnestness, although he admitted 
that it had never been anywhere realized. But it was his object 
‘ ‘ to present the Idea of a national Church as the only safe criterion 
by which we can judge of existing things.” It is only when “we 
are in full and clear possession of the ultimate aim of an institu¬ 
tion” that we can ascertain how far “this aim has ever been at¬ 
tained in other ways.” 

These, very briefly explained, are the main lines along which 
Coleridge moved the national mind in the third decade of this cen¬ 
tury. They may seem to some rather impalpable lines, and hardly 
calculated to touch the general mind. But they were influential, 
as the course of Christian literature has since proved. Like his 
own genius, they were diffusive rather than concentrative. The 
Coleridgian ideas permeated the general intellectual atmosphere, 
modifying old conceptions in criticism as well as theology, deepen¬ 
ing if not always clarifying the channels of thought in many direc¬ 
tions, but especially in the direction of Christian problems. They 
acted in this way as a new circulation of spiritual air all round, 
rather than in conveying any new body of truth. The very ridi¬ 
cule of Carlyle testifies to the influence which they exercised over 
aspiring and younger minds. The very emphasis with which he 
repudiates the Coleridgian metaphysic probably indicates that he 
had felt some echo of it in his own heart. 


COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


27 


Of tlie more immediate disciples of Coleridge, there are only two 
that claim our attention here. Others, such as Edward Irving, 
Maurice, and Kingsley, will afterwards come under notice in their 
special places. 

Of all the disciples of Coleridge, Julius Charles Hare may be 
reckoned the most direct and confessed. He acknowledges his 
obligations to him everywhere. ‘ ‘ Of all recent English writers, 
the one whose sanction I have chiefly desired is the great religious 
philosopher to whom the mind of our generation in England owes 
more than to any other man, and whose aim it was,” he says, “to 
spiritualize not only our philosophy but our theology, to raise them 
both above the empiricism into which they had fallen, and to set 
them free from the technical trammels of logical systems.” It was 
in 1846 that Hare thus wrote,*and in his “Life of John Sterling,” 
published two years later, he was equally emphatic in his admira¬ 
tion and enthusiasm for the “great Christian philosopher,” on Ster¬ 
ling’s account as well as his own. Sterling was not consent, he 
tells, to be a reverent student of Coleridge’s writings, but ‘ ‘ when 
an opportunity occurred, he sought out the old man in his oracular 
shrine at Highgate, and often saw him in the last years of his life ” 
—the fact, indeed, to which we owe the rival satiric description of 
the Highgate Sage and his pupils in Carlyle’s better known life of 
the gifted friend of both these men. 

To what extent Hare himself had any personal intercourse with 
Coleridge does not appear; but we see readily the influences which 
moved him towards the same line of thought. Born twenty-three 
years after Coleridge, or in 1795, Hare passed, after a brilliant ca¬ 
reer at school, to Cambridge in 1812, where he numbered among 
his fellow-students such men as Whewell and Thirlwall. Here it 
was, at his “entrance into intellectual life,” that he enjoyed, as he 
s£ys, the singular felicity, along with his compeers, of having his 
thoughts stimulated and trained by Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
“in whom practical judgment, and moral dignity, and a sacred love 
of truth, were so nobly wedded to the highest intellectual powers, ”f 
as opposed to the noxious influence of Byron, with his ‘ ‘ sentimental 
and self-ogling misanthropy.” The young Cambridge intellect of 
that day delighted to look to these pure masters of thought and 
song. Coleridge, indeed; had not yet entered on his theological 
stage, and Wordsworth fortunately remained a poetic teacher all 
his life ; but early inclination towards the Lake, rather than the 
Byronic, school of poetry, naturally led to an admiration of Cole- 


* Preface to “ Mission of the Comforter.” 
t “Mission of the Comforter.” 










28 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


ridge’s later writings. Hare was also, along with his English mas¬ 
ter, a diligent student of German philosophy. He had gone while 
quite a youth to Germany, and as, on the Wartburg, he saw the 
mark of Luther’s inkstand on the castle wall, he learned, as he af¬ 
terwards said, “to throw inkstands at the devil.” Again, in 1882, 
before he settled on his living at Hurstmonceaux,* he had gone 
abroad and made the friendship of Bunsen, and otherwise become 
further acquainted, not only with German philosophy, but with the 
new movement in German theology initiated by Schleiermacher. 
He was caught and greatly moved by all these fresh influences, and 
naturally turned to Coleridge as fCe chief leader in the fresh out¬ 
burst of theological thought at home. 

With all Hare’s noble enthusiasm and captivating spirit of Chris¬ 
tian culture, it cannot be said that he is much of a leader of thought 
himself. He is critical, didactic, philosophic in tone, always cult¬ 
ured. He writes at times with a fine, if desultory, eloquence; and 
his books, especially the “Guesses at Truth,” which he published 
along with his brother first in 1828, were much read, and felt to be 
highly stimulating, forty years ago. I can never forget my own 
obligation to some of them; yet it must be confessed that both au¬ 
thor and writings are now somewhat dim in the retrospect. They 
have not lived on, and this no doubt mainly because both reflected 
for the greater part the movement of his time rather than added 
any new and creative force to it. It was impossible for a mind so 
critical and scholarly as Hare’s, with such a range of varied and 
interesting knowledge, one of the best classical tutors in his day at 
Cambridge, the translator, along with Thirlwall, of Niebuhr’s “His¬ 
tory of Rome,” the student of Neander and Tholuck, as well as of 
Schleiermacher and Coleridge, not to own the breath of new life 
that was stirring everywhere the mental atmosphere around him, 
and to join in opening up new channels for it in which to circulate. 
It was his aim and ambition to lead, along with his master, the way 
to a more “spiritual philosophy and theology;” and he has beyond 
doubt helped many on this way. But he has not made the way 
itself much clearer; and it may be questioned whether his purely 
controversial writings, such as his “Contest with Rome” against 
Dr. Newman, and his “Vindication of Luther ” against Sir William 
Hamilton, have not more life in them than his more special con¬ 
tribution to thought. His undoubted learning and great fairness of 
temper, with (it must be admitted) keen severity of judgment when 


* This seems the proper spelling of this name (see “ Memorials of a 
Quiet Life,” C. iii., p. 69), but it is often spelled, and even by Julius 
Hare himself, Herstmonceux. 




COLERIDGE AND HIS SCHOOL. 


29 


his spirit was roused, gave him great success as a controversialist; 
and whatever may be our legitimate admiration of our own Scottish 
philosopher, I do not think any impartial student can doubt that he 
fared badly indeed at the hands of the English archdeacon in his 
treatment of the great German Reformer. Here he met for once 
his own match in learning, and a far deeper insight than his own 
into the meaning of theological terms and conceptions. 

In one, and that a very interesting manner, Julius Hare, his broth¬ 
ers, and kinsfolk, have been recalled to vivid life again in our 
day. The ‘ ‘ Memorials of a Quiet Life, ” the picture of devout and 
rational piety there presented to us, has touched many hearts not¬ 
withstanding its somewhat tedious and minute detail. Augustus 
William Hare, the joint author with his brother of the “ Guesses at 
Truth,” and author of the well-known “ Sermons to a Country Con¬ 
gregation ” (1837), claims a niche beside his brother as a helper in 
the revival of a more direct religious teaching. A more devoted, 
self-sacrificing, and loving Christian minister never lived; and his 
“Sermons” were a new awakening to many hearts. There are no 
more moving glimpses of spiritual life to be found in any literature 
than those which he and his widow, and the other inmates of the 
Rectory at Hurstmonceaux, present to a congenial reader. What¬ 
ever may be our estimate of the force of thought which emanated 
from this source, a more beautiful family life—a happier combina¬ 
tion of “beautiful souls”—was never brought together. The life 
of religion^was never better exemplified ; and in these days, when 
the veil has been lifted with such unhappy results on many inte¬ 
riors, it is well to be able to point to what religion may do for the 
most thoughtful and deeply pondering minds, when its benign spirit 
has once possessed them. 

Of John Sterling a few words must suffice. His name cannot be 
omitted, and yet we cannot dwell on it, nor are we called upon to do 
so. There must have been an infinite attractiveness in the man to 
have drawn out as he did such treasures of affection from teachers 
so different as Hare and Maurice on the one side and Carlyle on the 
other. Maurice hardly ever alludes to him without something of a 
sob, as if he might have done more for him than he did; and the 
hardier spirit of Carlyle melts into tenderness as he writes of him. 
“ A man of perfect veracity,” he says, “in thought, word, and deed. 
Integrity towards all men, nay, integrity had refined with him into 
chivalrous generosity; there was no guile or baseness anywhere 
found in him. A more perfectly transparent soul I have never 
known.” His “very faults grew beautiful.” Again, “I was struck 
with the kindly but restless swift-glancing eyes, which looked as if 


30 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


the spirits were all out coursing like a pack of many beagles beating 
every bush.” It must have been a lovable character which drew 
around him so much love. There must also have seemed in Sterling 
a marvellous potency as if, with due maturity, he might have done 
great things in literature if not in theology. But the brightness of 
his promise soon spent itself. It may be doubted even whether if 
he had lived he would have achieved much. “ Over-haste,” says 
Carlyle, “was his continual fault. Over-haste and want of due 
strength.” His genius flashed and coruscated like sheet-lightning 
round a subject rather than went to the heart of it. He lacked 
depth and the capacity of continuous thought. He was moved, if 
not by “every wind of doctrine,” by every breath of speculation 
that braced his intellectual lungs for a time. It was now Coleridge, 
and now Edward Irving, and now Schleiermacher, and now Carlyle 
that swept the strings of his mind and made them vibrate. We 
have already seen all that Coleridge was to him. He owed to him 
“education”—even “himself.” The “Aids to Reflection” was for 
many years his vade mecum. Of Schleiermacher, as late as 1836, he 
says, “he was on the whole the greatest spiritual teacher I have 
fallen in with.” And at last, when Carlyle’s teaching had long dis¬ 
placed any other, he doubted whether he had ever “got any good 
of what he had heard or read of theology.” From his bright, rest¬ 
less intellect all the bequests of Christian thinkers that once seemed 
to enrich him had been thrown off, and he went without theological 
help “into the great darkness.” And yet not without help, yea 
with better help than any theological reading could give him, if the 
story told in Hare’s life, but untold by Carlyle, be true. “As it 
grew dark he appeared to be seeking for something, and on his 
sister asking him what he wanted, he said, ‘ only the old Bible which 
I used so often at Hurstmonceaux in the cottages.’” 

Sterling was not destined to be any force of religious thought for 
his generation. With all his “sleepless intellectual vivacity” he 
was “not a thinker at all.” The words are Carlyle’s and not ours. 
Yet he deserves to be remembered, as he will continue to be associ¬ 
ated with the great Teacher who first kindled both his intellectual 
and religious enthusiasm. Carlyle has embalmed his name and dis- 
cipleship in beautiful form, and the picture will remain while Eng¬ 
lish literature lasts. But students of religious opinion will always 
also think of him as a disciple of Coleridge and the friend of 
Maurice and Hare. 


THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 31 


II. 

THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 

In 1825, the same year in which the ‘ ‘ Aids to Reflection ” saw the 
light, appeared Whately’s Essays “On some of the Peculiarities of 
the Christian Religion. ” Three years later, or in 1828, appeared a 
further series of essays by the same writer “On some of the Diffi¬ 
culties in the Writings of St. Paul.” But even before the earliest 
of these years Whately had been Bampton Lecturer, and published 
in the usual manner his lectures “On the Use and Abuse of Party 
Feeling in Religion” (1822).* In the third decade of the century, 
in short, Whately was something of a power in the theological 
world, as he had been long a power at Oxford. Entered at Oriel 
College as early as 1805 he became a Fellow in 1811, and finding 
a congenial soil there in such minds as Davidson—still somewhat 
remembered in connection with “Discourses on Prophecy”—and 
Copleston, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, he may be said to have 
founded, or at least inspired with its most vigorous life, the “ old ” 
or “early Oriel School,” which made a name for itself before New¬ 
man and his immediate friends joined the society. Keble, indeed, 
was a fellow of the college at this early time, but it was the .spirit 
not of Keble but of Whately that then ruled the place, and brought 
it fame. Arnold came as a youthful scholar from Corpus in 1815, 
and Hampden, who had been trained at Oriel from the first, had 
also entered it as a fellow the year before (1814). 

A more remarkable combination of able men has seldom been 
brought together. In addition to the names already mentioned, 
that of Dr. Hawkins deserves to be signalized. Already significant 
as a man of ability before 1825, f he succeeded Copleston as head of 
Oriel in 1828, and survived to our own time—a venerable figure, 
whose bright eyes and vivacious expression, bespeaking the sharp 


* His “Historic Doubts respecting Napoleon Buonaparte”—the most 
popular of all his books—was still earlier, 1819. 

f His “ Dissertation on Unauthoritative Tradition” appeared as early 
as 1819. Various publications followed, especially, in 1833, “Discourses 
upon some of the Principal Objects and Uses of the Historical Scriptures 
of the Old Testament.” 



32 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


and kindly intelligence within, none can forget who ever came in 
contact with him. Through all changes he maintained the liberal 
traditions of the place, even when Newmanism was at its height. 
His writings are now forgotten, but his personal influence was pow¬ 
erful for more than one generation. 

It was Copleston, however, who was the original master-mind of 
the movement. His lectures and converse had been “like a new 
spring of life” to Whately on his entrance to the College; and long 
afterwards (1845), Whately wrote to him from Dublin: “Fromyou 
I have derived the main principles on which I have acted and spec¬ 
ulated through life.”* Another says of Copleston: “ Under a pol¬ 
ished and somewhat artificial scholar-like exterior, and an appear¬ 
ance of even overstrained caution, there lurked not only much en¬ 
ergy of mind and precision of judgment, but a strong tendency to 
liberalism in Church and State, and superiority to ordinary fears and 
prejudices. It was in this direction that he especially trained 
Whately’s character;” f and Whately in his turn diffused the liberal 
spirit which he drank at the fountain-head. The new Oriel men 
were called “Noetic.” The School was the “Noetic School ;”% 
and they seemed to have rejoiced in the reputation of superior men¬ 
tal penetration and independence. “ Whether they were preaching 
from the University pulpit, or arguing in common rooms, or issuing 
pamphlets,” on passing occasions, they made a noise which arrested 
attention and filled with alarm many of the older University minds, 
who, Mr. Mozley says, “felt the ground shaking under them.” 

‘‘ Whately especially was claimed by his admirers to have a spiritu¬ 
al as well as mental pre-eminence,” and his presence infused terror 
among all ‘ ‘ who wished things to remain as they were in their own 
lifetime.” 

It is difficult now to realize the commotion once excited in the 
English theological mind by Whately and Arnold, and particular¬ 
ly by Hampden, now so little known ; but the alarm which they 
excited was very genuine at the time, as their influence upon the 
course of theological thought was very considerable. It is nec¬ 
essary, therefore, that we should review this influence and try to 
estimate it. No view of the course of religious thought in our cen¬ 
tury which omitted these names would be at all complete. They 
stand together, also, as a common group or School connected with 
Oriel College, widely separated as were their respective activities in 
life. By 1820 Arnold had finally left Oriel and his work as a fel- 


* “ Memoir of Copleston,” p. 103. 
t Herman Merivale, “ Whately’s Life,” vol. i., p. 13. 
| Mozley’s “Reminiscences,” vol. i., p. 18, 




THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 33 


low, although he afterwards returned to Oxford as Professor of 
History (1841). In 1831 Whately had become Archbishop of Dub¬ 
lin, and left Oxford permanently. Hampden alone remained in a 
succession of University posts till 1847, when he became Bishop 
of Hereford. An intimate correspondence, however, continued to 
unite the friends. It was Whately’s ear into which Hampden 
poured his troubles when they arose in 1836 on his appointment as 
Professor of Divinity. It was Arnold who came to his assistance 
at the same crisis in his powerful article in the Edinburgh Review, 
in the same year, on “ The Oxford Malignants.” The bonds of in¬ 
tellectual and religious fellowship, therefore, continued to unite them 
long after Oriel had been left behind, and a new sect, so to speak, 
had become identified with it. The two sects, in fact, ran closely 
into one another, as we have already indicated. Keble was the 
friend of Arnold, for whom he always expressed a warm regard; 
and Whately was “ the encouraging instructor ” of Newman, who, 
according to the Cardinal’s own record, opened his mind and 
taught him to “ use his reason.” In our next lecture we shall con¬ 
sider the band of Anglo-Catholics in the blaze of whose movement 
the “Noetic” School disappeared. But to the members of this 
School we must first direct attention. 

There are other names intimately associated with the school which 
also deserve notice, as representative of liberal theological opinion. 
Chevalier Bunsen appears in the background, intimately connected 
with the critical movement of the time, and with not a few of the 
men in England engaged in it. Blanco White is another associate 
of significance. Singularly he was an inmate of Oriel College from 
about 1826 to 1831. He then followed Whately to Dublin, and lived 
in his house till the stirrings of his restless mind drove him to Liver¬ 
pool and the Unitarianism in which he closed his strangely revolv¬ 
ing career. Blanco White would make an interesting study by him¬ 
self, with all his spiritual vicissitudes and pathetic ways. But two 
masters of spiritual diagnosis, Neander* and Mr. Gladstone,! have 
already sketched him, and we cannot do more here than set him in 
his place and draw attention to him. Influence in some degree he 
must have been, for he was the most sensitive and radiating of mor¬ 
tals, either giving or receiving light every day of his life. But curi¬ 
ous and touching as he is in himself, I have failed to trace any defi¬ 
nite impulse communicated by him to the Oriel School, or even to 
the religious thought of his time. Like many other men who have 
been trained in close systems of thought, when the spirit of doubt 
was awakened in him, he merely fell out of one system into another 


# “Blanco White,” Berlin, 1848. 

3 


t “Gleanings,” vol. ii. 









34 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


—Romanism, Atheism, Anglicanism, Unitarianism. He had little 
conception of true inquiry, or of the patience of thought which 
w r orks through all layers of systems to the core of truth beneath. 

Two names, however, deserve, along with the Oriel men already 
mentioned, a special space in this lecture—names belonging in their 
full brilliancy to the later history of the Church of England—but 
which emerged into prominence in the days of Whately and Arnold. 
Already before 1830 both Milman and Thirlwall had acquired a dis¬ 
tinctive reputation. They had entered on new fields of critical spec¬ 
ulation in regard to Scripture, and rutiled even to violence the sur¬ 
face of the religious world. We must therefore, before closing our 
present lecture, glance at the historian of the Jews and the transla¬ 
tor of Schleiermacher’s Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke. 

Richard Whately is the foremost name in our list. He was fifteen 
years younger than Coleridge, and eight years older than Arnold.* 
He was born, so to speak, into the Church, his father having been a 
vicar, and also Prebendary of Bristol. He was the youngest child 
of a large clerical family, as Coleridge was, and weak and somewhat 
ailing as a child—another point of coincidence between the poet and 
logician. In all other respects no two men could be conceived less 
alike in youth and manhood, although very notably in both cases 
the “youth” was the father of the “man.” The boyhood of Cole¬ 
ridge, as all know, was given to poetry and metaphysics. There 
may have been as youthful poets—there never was as youthful a 
metaphysician. The boyhood of Whately was given to arithmetic. 
There was something quite remarkable in his calculating faculty, 
which began to show itself between five and six. He could do the 
most difficult sums in his head before he knew anything of the 
names of the processes by which he worked them. Pie had his 
share also of castle-building, in the metaphysical line, as his powers 
matured, and became at times so absorbed in self-reflection, or in 
mental calculation, “as to run against people in the street.” The 
extraordinary thing is that all his arithmetical precocity came to 
nothing. His powers of calculation entirely left him as he grew 
up. ‘ ‘ The passion wore off,” he says; “ I was a perfect dunce at 
ciphering, and so have continued ever since.” He went to a good 
school near Bristol at nine years of age, and to Oxford when he 
was eighteen. He early contracted a great fondness for out-of-door 
wanderings, and studies in natural history, which never left him. 
“ Of fishing he was particularly fond.” Throughout life he retain¬ 
ed his love for exercise in the open air. It may be mentioned, also, 


* Whately was born in 1787; Arnold in 1795; Coleridge in 1773. 








THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 35 


that he retained through life, like many other men of concentrated 
habits of thought, the absence of mind which characterized him as 
a boy; and to this feature in some degree is no doubt to be attribu¬ 
ted such strange freaks as those with his climbing dog, in which he 
afterwards indulged even when a don at Oxford, to the consterna¬ 
tion of all the more staid, orderly-behaved dons. 

He very early developed real powers, not only of scholarship but 
of thought. As one of his friends said to him, ‘ ‘ From the begin¬ 
ning, and emphatically, Whately was a thinker. His favorite au¬ 
thors were few—Aristotle, Thucydides, Bacon, Bishop Butler, War- 
burton, Adam Smith.” Here, as in other things, unlike Coleridge, 
whose reading was always of an omnivorous character ; yet, strange¬ 
ly, a like imputation of plagiarism was made against both—in the 
case of Coleridge obviously because he forgot, in the plenitude of 
his philosophical reading, what was his own and what was others’; 
in the case of Whately because he was often falling upon thoughts 
which, if he had been more of a reader, he would have known that 
others had produced long ago. He was an Aristotelian in all the 
principles and methods of his philosophy, and to no man was the 
adage which he quotes in one of his early volumes more contempti¬ 
ble—“ Errare malo cum Platone quam cum istis vera sentire.” 

In theology, as in other things, Whately was an active and fertile 
thinker, animated by an insatiable love of finding the truth and 
plainly stating it. In sheer grasp of faculty—in laying hold of 
“some notion” which he considered practically important, and 
following it out in all its details, beating it plain till no one could 
fail to see it as he himself saw it—he was unrivalled. Clearness, 
common - sense, honesty, and strength of intellect were his great 
characteristics, and it is in virtue of these rather than in any depth 
or richness of new or living thought that he became a power first 
at Oxford and then in the theological world. Whereas Coleridge 
brought to the interpretation of Christianity the light of a fresh 
spiritual philosophy, and sought some synthesis of thought by which 
religion in its highest form should be seen not only to be in har¬ 
mony with human nature, but to be its only perfect flower and 
development, its true philosophy, Whately—taking the prevailing 
philosophy as he found it—brought the daylight of ordinary reason 
and of historical fact to play upon the accumulated dogmas of tra¬ 
ditionary religion, and to show how little they had, in many cases, 
to say for themselves. He was a subverter of prejudice and com¬ 
monplace—of what he believed to be religious as well as irreligious 
mistake, more than anything else. The majority of people seemed 
to him—as probably is always more or less the case—to live in an 
atmosphere of theological delusion, mistaking their own conceits 




36 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


for essential religious principles—making the New Testament writ¬ 
ers responsible for notions that, to a just and intelligent criticism, 
had no existence there, and were indeed contrary to its spirit and 
teaching rightly interpreted. A whole cluster of beliefs came in 
this way under his destroying hand: for example, the belief of any 
priesthood under the Gospel other than the common priesthood of 
Christians alike; the belief of verbal inspiration; and again, of the 
Fourth Commandment as being the obligatory rule for the Christian 
Sunday. So also the common evangelical doctrines of Election, of 
Perseverance, of Assurance, and of Imputation, all drew upon them 
his incisive pen. He did not maintain that there were not truths 
in Scripture answering to these doctrines; but the great aim of his 
volume “On the Difficulties of St. Paul’s Writings” was to show 
that the common evangelical ideas on these subjects were not Paul¬ 
ine. St. Paul’s notion of election, he maintained, was entirely dif¬ 
ferent from the common dogma which, in his view, virtually makes 
salvation and election identical. Analyzing at length the use of the 
Pauline word, he comes to the conclusion that it is to be interpre¬ 
ted always in a general sense of the body of the Church, “even as 
the whole nation of Israel was of old the chosen.” It has no rela¬ 
tion to the final destiny of individuals. When “the Apostles ad¬ 
dress these converts universally as the ‘ elect ’ or ‘ chosen ’ of God, 
this must be understood of their being chosen out of the whole mass 
of the Gentiles to certain peculiar privileges.” But the result in 
each case depends upon the use of the privileges. “We are in his 
hands,” says the Predestinarian, “as clay in the potter’s who hath 
power of the same lump to make one vessel to honor and another 
to dishonor;” but this very passage, he argues, so far from favoring 
the predestinarian doctrine makes against it, ‘ ‘ since the potter never 
makes any vessel for the express purpose of being broken and de¬ 
stroyed.” On the contrary, the meaning of the statement is that he 
makes “some to nobler and some to meaner uses; but all for some 
use, not with a design that it should be cast away and dashed to 
pieces.” Even so, “The Almighty, of his own arbitrary choice, 
causes some to be born to wealth or rank, others to poverty or ob¬ 
scurity; some in a heathen and others in a Christian country; the 
advantages and privileges are various and, so far as we can see, ar¬ 
bitrarily dispensed. But the final rewards or punishments depend, 
as we are plainly taught, on the use or abuse of those advantages.” 

It would be interesting, if we had time, to compare Coleridge’s and 
Whately’s modes of treating this mysterious doctrine—the more in¬ 
ward, spiritual, experiential treatment of the one, the critical and 
historical treatment of the other. No handling could well be more 
different in the two cases, and yet there is an affinity between them 




THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 37 

in end, if not in means. Both are alike opposed to the hyper-logical 
forms under which the doctrine has been chiefly transmitted to us. 
It was the aim of both, in this and other matters, to “free theology 
from its logical trammels,” to bring it in the one case to the test of 
spiritual experience, in the other to the test of historical criticism. 

Logician as Whately was, no man more strongly repudiated the 
application of logical forms to Scriptural truth. One of the chief 
hurts of religion, in his opinion, had arisen from this very cause, and 
the consequent multiplication of “foolish and unlearned questions” 
in the theological w T orld. Questions, however “interesting and 
sublime,” which plainly “surpass the limits of our faculties,” should 
be left alone. There was in him, as in Coleridge, a strong vein of 
Christian agnosticism. All such questions gender strife and hope¬ 
less controversy, for how can men agree in bold theories respecting 
points on which they can have no correct knowledge—which are in 
fact unintelligible to them ? To this cause he attributes the heresies 
on the subject of the Trinity in the early Church, and especially de¬ 
nounces certain rash attempts made in his own day—by Hervey, for 
example, the once well-known author of “Meditations among the 
Tombs” — “to explain, on the abstract principle of justice,” the 
counsels of the Most High, on the equally incomprehensible mystery 
of the Atonement.* 

We might give many illustrations of Whately’s mode of theologi¬ 
cal thought. It must suffice to emphasize its general character. 
Whately was undoubtedly for his day a strong man, who believed 
that he had a reforming mission to accomplish in the Church—to 
make men think more simply and sincerely about religion, to teach 
them to look at Scripture with their own eyes, and to destroy, as he 
conceived, grave errors both on the side of Puritanism and of Sacer¬ 
dotalism. He had no fear of any man or of any party. The very 
limits of his theological as of his philosophical reading gave an in¬ 
tensity to his own principles, and a confidence in ventilating them, 
which a larger acquaintance with the history of theology and of 
human nature in connection therewith would probably have abated. 
Certain it is that the special forms of opinion against which he strove 
were not killed in his day, and that some of them are as vigorous as 
ever. But this does not detract from the real force that he was, nor 
from the respect that is due to his constant courage and love of the 
truth. No man ever loved truth more, or more boldly followed it 
as he found it. No one more fully acted on his own principle that 
“fairness and candor” are the best allies of truth, and that religion 
can never sutler from any theory on any subject that is really well 


* “Bampton Lectures” (1833), p. 179. 




38 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


founded and sound.* He loved with all his heart what he held to 
he the verities of religion, and defended them with all his might; but 
he hated superstition in every form. The excesses of Anglo-Catholic 
Theology and of German Rationalism were alike obnoxious to him. 
He closed equally with Newman and Strauss, and beat them with 
the pitiless and persistent force of his argument and ridicule.f One 
reason, no doubt, of the comparative neglect which has overtaken 
his 'works is that they had all in this way a more or less immediate 
and temporary purpose. They were called forth by the exigencies 
of circumstance or opinion in which his life was passed. Many of 
them, moreover, are neither more nor less than tracts, such as his 
once well-known and highly popular Cautions for the Times.” 
And no such writings, however lively, suggestive, and successful 
for the moment, have any future life before them. They perish in 
their use, and a second generation cannot find any interest in what 
may have even violently agitated or amused their predecessors. 

Dr. Arnold was Wliately’s great friend and frequent correspond¬ 
ent. The old days at Oriel, from 1815 to 1820, had bound them 
closely together, and the bond was only severed by Arnold’s sudden 
death in 1842. To Arnold as to Newman, in their first Oriel con¬ 
nection, Whately had been something of a master. Even after both 
had left Oriel ,% Arnold tells us that a visit to Whately was “a 
marked era in the formation of his opinions.” Again, in the preface 
to his first volume of sermons, published in 1828, Arnold expresses 
his special obligation to the author of the “Essays on the Writings 
of St. Paul,” and his apprehension that some of his sentences were 
so like passages in the “Essays” that he might be accused of plagi¬ 
arism. The truth was that his own views, while excogitated inde¬ 
pendently and before he had seen Dr. Whately’s volume, had yet 
been greatly helped,“confirmed, and extended” by communication 
with his friend. When Whately was promoted to the Archbishopric 
of Dublin, three years later, Arnold bears the warmest testimony to 
his fitness for that high office. He is “a man so good and so great 
that no folly or wickedness will move him from his purpose,” and 
“ in point of real essential holiness there does not live a truer Chris¬ 
tian than Whately.” 

In this and other inward qualities most people would probably 
nowadays reckon Arnold as the superior. The head-master of 
Rugby was certainly a good and holy man, if ever man was. We 


* “Essays” (1823), p. 27. 

t See his “Cautions for the Times,” as well as liis “ Historic Doubts.” 
t I' 1 1822, when Whately was temporarily resident at Halesworth, in 
Suffolk, a living to which he had been presented by his uncle. 




THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 39 


may dispute his breadth and calmness of temper, his knowledge of 
| the world and of the history of human thought and character—his- 
I torian as he was; we may even doubt the results of his teaching 
(they could hardly fail, in some respects, to have been deeply disap- 
‘ pointing to himself if he had lived); but we cannot doubt the deep 
devotion and piety of his nature. There have been few more thor¬ 
oughly Christian minds in our century, and it gives one a shock, like 
a personal wound, when we read a statement of Newman’s, made in 
the fit of petulant zeal that seized him when abroad, before his mis¬ 
sion at Oxford began. Some one, he tells us, said in his hearing 
that a certain interpretation of Scripture must be Christian “because 
Dr. Arnold took it.” He interposed, “ But is he a ChristianV” Ar¬ 
nold had his doubts in his youth; he was never all his life a Chris¬ 
tian after the pattern of Dr. Newman and his school; but we can 
hardly think of a mind in recent times—unless it be Maurice’s—more 
habitually under the influence of the Divine than that of Arnold. 
From the time that he took orders and settled at Laleham (1819-28) 
there was with him “a deep consciousness of the invisible world.” 
All his being was interpenetrated with religion. All the acts of his 
life were colored by it.* “ No one could know him even a little,” 
said a friend/' and not be struck by his absolute wrestling with evil, 
and, with the feeling of God’s help on his side, scorning as well as 
hating it.” As he strove with evil, so he loved Christ, and clung to 
Him as the one supreme Object of thought, imagination, and affec¬ 
tion. He was Christian to the core, and it was the very ardency of 
his Christian interest that kindled his fierceness alike against “ Ox¬ 
ford malignancy” and school-boy dishonor. He could not bear that 
men should profess the Christian faith and yet act, whether for a 
party purpose or school-boy gratification, in the face of Christian 
principle and precept. 

It was the same evident devotion to religion and its verities, as he 
felt them, that gave his liberal opinions so much weight. Men in 
general felt, when they heard of his free thoughts about Scripture 
and the Church, that here at least was the speech of a man who did 
not undervalue any religious obligation. It was known to be the 
aim of his life to make a public school Christian, and a more self- 
denying or devoted task could hardly be imagined than this. What¬ 
ever he wrote or said, there were those, and they were an increasing 
number, who said that it was a genuine religious impulse, and noth¬ 
ing else, that inspired him. 

If we ask more particularly what were the elements of Arnold’s 
power in quickening religious thought, the answer must be first of 


* See “ Life,” vol. i., p. 30 et seq. 





40 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


all that he, too, vitalized as Coleridge did the Christian conceptions 
of his time. He did so, not by carrying them as the former did into 
a higher region of thought, or fitting them anew to the inner con¬ 
stitution of humanity, but in an equally real and important manner 
by showing how Christian ideas extend into every aspect of con¬ 
duct and duty, transfusing and elevating the whole round of life. 
This was the key-note of his first volume of sermons,* and it was 
more or less the key-note of all. Arnold’s studies and tastes, much 
as he prized Coleridge, did not lead him towards the Coleridgian 
metaphysics. His views were objective and practical. Christianity, 
whether or not complete as a philosophy, was to him plainly perfect 
as an ethic or discipline. It took up the whole man, and there was 
no part of life beyond its inspiration and control. It was no affair 
of sects, or mere rule of the “religious life” specially so called. 
All idea of isolating religion and keeping it select—the employment, 
whether of evangelical or of Anglo-Catholic votary—was hateful to 
him. It was a life-blood permeating all human activity — school, 
college, politics, literature — no less than what is commonly meant 
by the Church. So it was when he went into the pulpit; he did not 
put on any clerical tone or separate himself from his other occupa¬ 
tions as scholar, historian, inquirer. He was himself there as every¬ 
where else, and sought to speak in simple unconventional words, as 
he would “in real life,” in serious conversation with a friend, or 
with those who asked his advice. 

There was of course nothing absolutely new in this way of con¬ 
ceiving and applying Christianity, no more than there was anything 
original in Coleridge’s realistic philosophy. It had been a common¬ 
place from the beginning that Christianity was a “religion of com¬ 
mon life.” But not less certainly had it become in many quarters 
an esoteric or sectarian rather than a common religion; a religion 
of the cathedral or the conventicle; of “ the fathers ” or “ reform¬ 
ers;” of the evangelical tea-circle or the Anglo-Catholic coterie. It 
bore a note of segregation and exclusion in many forms, and spoke 
in artificial and “ pious ” phraseology. It required, therefore, if not 
originality, yet something of vital force to bring it back to its prim¬ 
itive energy as not only “the light of all our seeing,” but the in¬ 
spiration of all our doing. Arnold and Augustus William Hare did 
more by their sermons to break down the old technicalities of the 
pulpit, and to spread a homely vital “common interest in Christian 
truths ” than any other preachers of their time. Men were made to 
feel in all ranks how much religion concerned them—how closely it 


* Published in 1828. The last edition was issued by his daughter, Mrs. 
Forster, in 1878. 



THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 41 


had to do with their every-day work—and was designed to he the 
very breath of their being not merely on Sunday—or at service and 
sacrament—but in every form and expression of public and private 
activity. 

It was this vital and broad grasp of Christian truth that lay at the 
root of Arnold’s w T ell-known idea of the Church as only another 
name for the State in its perfect development. This seems now an 
astounding proposition, fitted to take the breath away from some 
accepted public teachers. But, as we saw in our last lecture, large 
ideas of. the Church had a charm for the highest intelligence of the 
opening century. The reign of sectarian commonplace had not yet 
begun, and thoughts which the genius of Hooker and of Burke has 
consecrated by their exposition were still deemed worthy of discus¬ 
sion. Neither these thinkers nor Arnold, of course, sought to iden¬ 
tify the activities of the Church and the State. They knew very 
well that these were two bodies with distinct spheres of action. 
They knew also well that, as things are, they cannot be identical. 
What they meant was that the ideal of each of these bodies merges 
in that of the other. The State can only attain its true object, the 
highest welfare of man, when it acts “with the wisdom and good¬ 
ness of the Church.” The Church can only attain the same object 
when “invested with the sovereign power of the State.” On the 
one hand Arnold repudiated strongly the merely secular view of the 
State “as providing only for physical ends;” on the other hand he 
hated if possible still more what he regarded as an anti-Christian 
view of the Church, that it should be “ ruled by a divinely appointed 
succession of priests or governors,” rather than “by national laws.” 
The national commonwealth as represented by Parliament—which 
in this connection is the bete noire of modern ritualist and dissen¬ 
ter alike — was to him the fit sphere for the realization of Christi¬ 
anity. 

In speaking of the Church as clothed with the powers of the State 
Arnold did not of course mean, as Anglican and Puritan had both 
meant in the seventeenth century, that the Church should enforce 
legal penalties, or enact by its authority any uniform plan of church- 
government and discipline. This was quite inconsistent with his 
whole mode of thought, and with his special ideal of the Church. 
He would have the Church “a sovereign society,” not as exercising 
separate powers, but because its powers were merged in those of a 
Christian State, all the public officers of which should feel them¬ 
selves to be also “necessarily officers of the Church.” So it seemed 
to him that the superstitious distinction between clergy and laity 
would vanish, and so also their consequent jealousy of one another 
—their spheres being in fact the same, nothing being “ too secular 


42 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


to claim exemption from the enforcement of Christian duty, noth¬ 
ing too spiritual to claim exemption from the control of the govern¬ 
ment of a Christian State.” Then, as Dean Stanley explains his 
position’ “the whole nation, amid much variety of form, ceremo¬ 
nial, and opinion, would at last feel that the great ends of Christian 
and national society now for the first time realized to their view 
were a far stronger bond of union between Christians, and a far 
deeper division from those who were not Christians, than any sub¬ 
ordinate principle either of agreement or separation.” 

With such general views of the Church it may be imagined that 
Arnold’s ecclesiastical outlook was by no means a happy one in the 
disturbed years that followed the passing of the Reform Bill. On 
the one hand he saw, as the liberal politicians of the day did, the 
urgency of Church reform. It did not appear to him that the An¬ 
glican establishment could live unless greatly modified, so as to 
make an open door for dissenters; on the other hand, he prized the 
Church of England as one of the most precious institutions of the 
country; and nowhere is there a more eloquent defence of the bless¬ 
ings of a parochial ministry than in the pamphlet which he pub¬ 
lished at that time. None of his writings made more noise, or gave 
more offence, than the “ Principles of Church Reform.” It offend¬ 
ed equally churchmen and dissenters. Its latitudinarianism was ob¬ 
noxious to the one; its defence of an Established Church, and its 
assaults upon sectarianism, obnoxious to the other. Its advocacy of 
large and liberal changes repelled the Conservatives; its severe re¬ 
ligious tone displeased the Liberals. One proposal which it con¬ 
tained raised a special outcry, namely, that the parish churches 
should be open to different forms of worship at different hours, 
with a view to the comprehension of the dissenters. The plan has 
been long acted upon on the Continent; but to the average English 
Churchman there is something peculiarly exasperating in this sug¬ 
gestion. It stirs his wildest feelings as well as his most foolish 
prejudices. And the storm which descended on Arnold for this 
and other suggestions was of the most violent kind. It even pene¬ 
trated Rugby, and for a time painfully interfered with the serenity 
of his school work. 

Yet, as it has been remarked, not a few of the changes which 
Arnold then advocated for the increased efficiency of the Church of 
England have been since carried out with advantage; such changes 
as the multiplication of bishoprics, the creation of subordinate or 
suffragan bishops, the revival of an inferior order of ministers or 
deacons, the use of churches on week-days, and a more simple order 
of service than is enjoined at morning and evening prayer So it is 
for the most part. The abuse of the reformer, as well as the blood 


THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 43 

of the martyr, becomes the seed of the Church, and when the evil 
day is past the good seed springs up to life. 

But we have still to notice the chief service of Arnold to the 
Christian intelligence of his time. He was not only a profoundly 
Christian man, breathing the vital atmosphere of Christian truth in 
all his teaching; nor was he only a church reformer; but he was 
perhaps more eminently a critical and historical student of Script¬ 
ure. Here, too, he followed the wake of Coleridge after his own 
way. He did not borrow from this great teacher. There is hardly 
any evidence of Coleridge’s direct influence upon him; and the 
“Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit” were not made public till 
1840. But his own tastes and studies led him independently in the 
same direction. He was from the first an earnest student of Nie¬ 
buhr’s great “ History of Rome,” and delighted in its critical method; 
He learned German, so as to be able to read it in the original. He 
corresponded both with Bunsen and Julius Hare as to its merits. 
He made, moreover, Bunsen’s personal acquaintance in 1827, and 
derived much stimulus from him in this and other respects. Yet 
withal Arnold remained, as did also Whately, and their common 
friend Hampden, entirely English in their spirit of theological in¬ 
quiry; and of German theology as a whole Arnold seems to have 
known almost nothing. So far he is different, not only from his 
friend Hare, and Hare’s collaborator Thirlwall, but also from Mil- 
man, as we shall see, who were well versed in German theological 
research. If ever, indeed, there was a mind intensely English in 
the practical ethical bent underlying all his studies and all his work, 
it was Arnold's. 

His powers as an interpreter of Scripture, therefore, sprang from 
his own native instincts of inquiry and the clear moral sense which 
made him hate confusion of thought in all directions. He saw that 
the whole method of scriptural interpretation, as represented by the 
Evangelical and High Church Schools alike, was untenable. Script¬ 
ure was made to mean anything, according to the preconceptions of 
each. Particularly, it may be said, he had no respect for patristic 
interpretation. The whole patristic superstition which once more 
rose to prominence in his day was strongly repelled by him. He 
recognized no special intelligence in the Ante-Nicene Church, still 
less in the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries. The interpreta¬ 
tion of prophecy more than other parts of Scripture appeared to 
him a chaos, and to this, therefore, he devoted his main attention. 
His two sermons, with preface and notes, on this subject, published 
in 1841, remain the most complete and systematic of any of his 
fragments on Exegetical Theology. Ten years before, he had drawn 
attention to the general subject in an essay affixed to his second vol- 



44 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


ume of sermons. Then he was in the more aggressive mood that 
characterized his earlier years, and expressed himself so as to excite 
violent commotion in various quarters. In point of fact, there was 
nothing alarming in Arnold’s essay ‘ ‘ On the Right Interpretation 
of the Scripture.” The only exception to it that would be taken 
nowadays, as to certain recent interpretations of “Ruling Ideas of 
Early Ages ” * in connection with the Old Testament, is that it does 
not grasp all the difficulties of the subject or set them in the full 
light of the historical method. It deals too much in ingenious ex¬ 
planation. 

Arnold’s principle and method of interpretation are both in the 
right direction. He recognized clearly that Scripture is not to be 
regarded as a Koran or infallible code composed at one time, but as 
a literature of many fragments and times, and of divers authority. 
Its commands and teaching alike are to be judged according to the 
occasion and circumstances in which they were given. In other 
words, they are to be interpreted, not absolutely, but relatively. 
The Bible, as to its text, structure, the authorship of its several 
parts, and its literary and didactic form, is to be read and under¬ 
stood like all other ancient literature; and if this may seem to ren¬ 
der Scriptural interpretation a difficult and somewhat hopeless task, 
save for the scholarly and trained intelligence, the difficulty is no 
more than is to be found elsewhere. We cannot fully understand 
any ancient writings except in this manner. And the Bible has this 
advantage over all ancient writings, that while it can only be inter¬ 
preted by the same processes, and is liable to similar uncertainties, 
there is more than enough in its pages for practical guidance to the 
simplest reader. In this sense, and in no other, is it true that “he 
that runneth may read ” and profit by it. 

In short, the divine side of Scripture, the side on which it appeals 
to our spiritual life and finds us, as Coleridge said, is legible by 
every devout reader. But the human or literary side of it presents 
everywhere difficulties of a similar character to those found in all 
literature of the remote past. These difficulties must be faced in 
the same manner and by the very same processes as we must face 
similar difficulties in the works of Plato or Aristotle. It proves 
nothing against the truth to be found in these writings, that scho¬ 
liasts and commentators have given very different versions of parts 
of them or of the principles they are supposed to teach. Nor is the 
perplexity of commentators, in the case of the Bible or any other 
writing, a necessary index of the obscurity of the writers. Mis- 


* “Ruling Ideas of Early Ages and their Relation to Old Testament 
Faith,” by J. B. Mozley, D.D., late Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 





THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 45 

reading of Scripture, no less tlian misreading of Plato, may come, 
and in point of fact does come, more frequently from reading into 
them ideas of our own than from any real obscurity in the texts 
themselves. 

How much this has been the case with Scripture it is needless to 
say. ‘ Dogmas have been brought to Scripture, and Scripture been 
made to square with them, instead of truth being sought carefully 
in its pages, or by comparison of Scripture with Scripture. To the 
true interpreter dogma is the end and never the beginning of Script¬ 
ural interpretation. In the strict sense, indeed, dogma is not found 
in Scripture at all. It is deduced from it; but it is the product of 
much more than Scripture. There it only appears, in a limited 
‘ ‘ concrete ” sense, as bearing on religious feeling and character. 

We cannot too highly estimate the services of Arnold as a Bibli¬ 
cal student in his time. His friend Bonamy Price * has perhaps 
spoken of his work in this direction in somewhat extravagant terms, 
and with too little regard to the work of others. For the spirit of 
genuine historical criticism was in fact largely at work in the years 
that preceded the Oxford movement, not only in Coleridge, but in 
Hare and Thirlwall at Cambridge, and again in Whately and Mil- 
man. Yet more than any of these men, perhaps, Arnold combined 
with critical acumen and breadth of historical perception a devout, 
inspiring, and solemn appreciation of the spiritual side of Scripture. 
In exegesis he was certainly richer, if not stronger or clearer, than 
his friend Whately. The two sermons “On the Interpretation of 
Prophecy ” speak a deeper and more evangelical language than the 
essays “ On the peculiar difficulties of St. Paul’s writings.” There, 
as everywhere, Arnold is not only Christian, but delicately, perva¬ 
sively, and in the right sense, if not in the commonplace sense of 
the word, evangelically Christian. To the impartial student of 
these, as indeed of all Arnold’s sermons, it must remain a saddening 
thought that the religious world, both Anglo-Catholic and Puritan, 
should have once denounced such a teacher and called for his con¬ 
demnation. 

But it was neither Whately nor Arnold, but the third of the 
friends, since comparatively forgotten, who called forth the loudest 
denunciations of the time. To the historian of religious opinion 
there is something highly significant in the successive agitations 
which were excited in the Church of England by Dr. Hampden. 
According to all unbiassed testimony, he was a particularly gentle 
and peace-loving man. Of all the contentions associated with his 
name, “his only part in them,” it has been said, “was the pain 


* In a Letter, “ Life of Arnold,” vol. i., p. 213. 






46 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


they could not fail to occasion him.” He was, however, Mr. Moz- 
ley says, “one of the most unprepossessing of men.” There was a 
certain stolidity about him that contrasted strongly with the bright, 
vivacious, and singularly lovable figures with whom the eyes of 
Oriel men were then familiarized. Even the less agreeable men 
had life, candor, and not a little humor. Hampden’s face was in¬ 
expressive, his head was set deep on his broad shoulders, and his 
voice was harsh and unmodulated. Some one said of him that he 
“ stood before you like a mile-stone and brayed at you like a jack¬ 
ass.”* We have quoted these words, certainly not for any value 
they have, but as a piquant expression of old Oxford humor—I 
suppose. In Mr. Mozley’s volumes there are not a few such sketch¬ 
es, but none more animated, or inspired with more bitterness. The 
book, as a whole, is a readable collection of old stories and recol¬ 
lections of the famous men who then adorned Oriel; but it is almost 
absolutely worthless for any other purpose. Its judgments of men 
and things are neither candid nor intelligent. It fills one with as¬ 
tonishment that the author of such a book should at any time have 
had influence in connection with a theological or religious move¬ 
ment. Hampden was probably what is called a “heavy man;” his 
books are certainly not light reading; but so far from being unlov¬ 
able, he seems to have been a singularly amiable and tender-hearted 
man. 

But what then was his special offence ? And why should he, 
more than any of the early Oriel School, have been the victim of 
persecution and annoyance? The real reasons are not far to seek. 
His success, first in being appointed to the Chair of Divinity in 
1886, and then, eleven years later, in being made Bishop of Here¬ 
ford, was unacceptable to many.f His pamphlet, in 1834, advocat¬ 
ing the admission of Dissenters to the University, was not only un¬ 
acceptable but deeply offensive.^: The man who, at that date, wrote 
in Oxford as follows, could only be regarded equally by Anglicans 
and Puritans with much dislike. “ I do not scruple,” he says, “ to 


* “ Reminiscences,” vol. i,, p. 380. 

t Was there not something also in his having snatched the Chair of 
Moral Philosophy from Newman in 1834? 

X H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex wrote (June, 1837) to Dr. Hampden : 
“The unfair and unjust attacks on your ‘ Bampton Lectures’ were all 
the more disreputable because unheard of until a public testimony of 
the approval of a liberal government had been conferred on you. I fear 
that jealousy, not justice, was the prompter to such acts.” Lord Rad¬ 
nor, in the House of Lords, said, “ He had no doubt that all the hostility 
to him (Dr. H.) arose from his advocating the admission of Dissenters to 
the University.” 



the early oriel school and its congeners. 47 

avow myself favorable to a removal of all tests, so far as they are 
employed as securities of Orthodoxy. Tests are no part of religious 
education.” But further, Hampden in his very earliest work on 
“The Philosophical Evidence of Christianity” (1827),* and again, 
in his famous Bampton Lectures (1832), assailed what has long been 
and continues to be the very apple of the traditional theologian’s 
eye—the vast fabric of “logical theology.” The whole aim of his 
Bampton Lectures was to explain how such a theology had grown 
up under the influence of the scholastic philosophy. It was, in his 
view, no Divine product nor even any directly derivative product of 
Divine revelation. It was largely a purely human compound, based 
on the logical terminology of the Patristic and Mediaeval schools, 
and instead of being a blessing to the Church it had, as he supposed 
and said, been in many ways a curse, ‘ ‘ the principal obstacle to the 
union and peace of the Church.” “The combination and analy¬ 
ses of words which the logical theology has produced have given 
occasion, ” in his own words, ‘ ‘ to the passions of men to arm them¬ 
selves in behalf of the phantoms thus called into being.” 

The wonder is not that such sentiments raised a commotion when 
they came to be understood, but that they should not have excited 
more attention when they were delivered. There was nothing es¬ 
sentially untrue or dangerous in them, but they touched to the very 
core the dogmatic spirit. Wliately had assailed many popular theo¬ 
logical errors—dogmas which he considered to be mistakenly identi¬ 
fied with the teaching of St. Paul. Arnold had proclaimed his dis¬ 
like of theological technicalities by divesting his own preaching of 
them entirely, and setting forth in ordinary language and direct and 
simple forms for his parishioners, and afterwards for his school-boys, 
what he believed to be the truth as it is in Jesus. Both had, by their 
broader interpretations of Scripture, emphasized the distinction be¬ 
tween the simple apostolic doctrine and later elaborate theologies. 
But Hampden did more than this. He explained, or endeavored to 
explain, how the earlier Scriptural faith had passed into later creeds 
and theologies. And it is strange, but true, that to the polemical 
Theologian explanation is often more exasperating than contradiction .t 
Not only so, but the principle of explanation with which Hampden 


* “ Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity; or, The Credi¬ 
bility obtained to a Scriptural Revelation, from its Coincidence with the 
Facts of Nature.” 1827. 

t Such a sentence as the following may be supposed to have been par¬ 
ticularly exasperating: “ Whilst theologians of the schools have thought 
they were establishing religious truths by elaborate argumentation, they 
have been only multiplying and re-arranging theological language.” 







48 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


worked not merely threatened this or that traditional dogma, but 
was a solvent of all. The whole fabric of patristic, mediaeval, and 
Anglo-Catholic theology seemed to go down before it, and to be con¬ 
verted into nothing but a phantasmal terminology. The dogma of 
the Trinity, in its Athanasian form, vanished into a mere series of 
scholastic propositions. This, and nothing less than this, was the 
contention of his opponents afterwards. The famous pamphlet, 
“Elucidation of Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements,”attributed 
to Dr. Newman, and denounced by Dr. Arnold as containing a series 
of deliberate misrepresentations .(“falsehoods” is Arnold’s word, 
but we shrink from using it), took up this ground. Dr. Pusey took 
the same ground. Samuel Wilberforce, Mr. Gladstone, and many 
others happily forgotten virtually took the same ground, and this in 
face of Hampden’s own statement in his lectures that the Trinitarian 
doctrine itself, in its scriptural simplicity, “ emerged from the mists 
of human speculation like the bold, naked land on which an atmos¬ 
phere of fog had for a while rested and then been dispersed. ” 

The wonder, then, truly is, in the light of all that was afterwards 
said and written of the Bampton Lectures, that they passed at the 
time without hostile criticism. Not only did they do so, but, ac¬ 
cording to Dr. Hampden’s friends, they were received by large and 
approving audiences. Eyen Mr. Mozley admits that * ‘ a considera¬ 
ble number went to hear the first lecture.”* Afterwards he says 


* It is hardly necessary to say that all that Mr. Mozley says as to Dr. 
Hampden is to be received with suspicion. A writer who still virtually 
asserts that the Bampton Lectures were inspired, if not composed, in 
great part by Blanco White, notwithstanding the testimony of Dr. Hamp¬ 
den’s family to the contrary (his children having often played in his 
study while he was writing them), and the absolute discrepancy between 
such a style as that of the Lectures and Blanco White’s writings, is really 
unworthy of credence. The story was a silly and false scandal at the 
time, which could only have sprung up in the atmosphere of ridiculous 
gossip often found at a University seat. It is not made any better by 
Mr. Mozley’s new statements as to his being a witness to the great inti¬ 
macy which prevailed between Hampden and Blanco White in 1831 and 
1832, while Hampden was preparing the Lectures. Be it so. Because 
two men are friends, and take constant walks together, and even give 
and receive “ material assistance in the way of information,” is one to be 
accused of having given lectures, and published them as his own, while 
they were in reality those of his friend ? For if the plagiarism does not 
come to this, it comes to nothing. In gathering information, and even 
getting “ material assistance,” surely any author is not only entitled, but 
bound to utilize his friends—if they are willing to be so utilized. But 
the whole charge was a silly one, hurtful to those who made it, and des¬ 
picable in those who repeat it. It shows, moreover, a singular lack of 






THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 49 


they were neither “listened to nor read.” But the fact remains, 
that they were delivered with some degree of approval three years 
before, and published two years before, they were found to contain 
the dangerous heresies afterwards attributed to them. Both Whate- 
ly and Arnold dwell upon this fact, in evidence of the personal ran¬ 
cor, that animated many of Dr. Hampden’s opponents, and of “the 
folly and cruelty and baseness” of the calumnious agitation with 
which he was assailed. 

There have been successive agitations of a similar kind in Oxford 
since 1836; Hampden himself, eleven years later (1847), when made 
Bishop of Hereford, was for a second time the victim of the same 
persecuting and unworthy spirit. But none of these attacks ex¬ 
ceeded in noise and malignity the famous or infamous outburst 
which in 1836 assailed the Bampton Lectures of 1832. There have 
been, as Whately said, “other persecutions as unjust and as cruel 
(for burning of heretics was happily not in the power of the Hamp¬ 
den persecutors); but for impudence I never knew the like.” The 
exhibition of riotous and hostile feeling was ‘ ‘ startling even to those 
who had not anticipated much greatness or goodness from human 
nature.”* “Was there ever,” says Arnold, “an accusation involv¬ 
ing its unhappy promoters in such a dilemma of infamy, compro¬ 
misers of mischievous principles in 1832, 1833, 1834, and 1835; or 
slanderers of a good and most Christian man in 1836?” 

As soon as Hampden’s appointment to the Divinity professorship 
was announced the outbreak began, under the stimulus and lead¬ 
ership of the High Church party. Representations were addressed 
to Government, to the Archbishop, to the Bishops. A committee, 
which met in the common room of Corpus Christi College, was 
nominated to conduct the prosecution against one who had asserted 
principles not only subversive of the authority of the Church, but 


intelligence in an Oxford litterateur or theologian. To any real insight 
or knowledge it is no more doubtful that the same mind which con¬ 
ceived and produced the Essay on “ The Philosophical Evidence of 
Christianity,” when in London in 1829, conceived and produced the 
Bampton Lectures—with whatever assistance—in Oxford in 1832, than it 
is that these two books were published at their respective dates. An in¬ 
jurious and unworthy note in S. Wilberforce’s Life, vol. i., pp. 468-9, has 
contributed to revive this scandal about the composition of Dr. Hamp¬ 
den’s Lectures ; but it contains nothing new. The fact of the preva¬ 
lence of the scandal—its “ being spoken of”—seems to a certain class of 
ecclesiastical critics evidence that it was true. Really this is only evi¬ 
dence of the facility with which the same class of minds propagate what 
they wish to be true. 

* Whately. 


4 



50 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


of the whole fabric and reality of Christian truth. Newman and 
Pusey vied with each other in setting forth Dr. Hampden’s errors. 
A Convocation was summoned* to consider a Statute to be passed 
by the University depriving the author of his voice in the nomina¬ 
tion of Select Preachers. The “non-placet” of the Proctors at the 
first meeting interposed to prevent the passing of the Statute. ‘ ‘ In¬ 
stantly,” writes Mr. Nassau Senior, who is not likely to have exag¬ 
gerated the scene, “there arose shouts, screams, and groans from 
the galleries and the area, such as no deliberative Assembly proba¬ 
bly ever heard before.” A second Convocation was called for May, 
when a change of proctors had taken place, and the obnoxious 
and, it is believed, “ illegal” Statute was then passed. The press, of 
course, from different sides, whipped up the excitement; and a de¬ 
bate in the House of Lords in the following year brought it to a 
height, and possibly helped in some degree to allay it. The fever 
heat, however, may be said to have continued for two years, and 
even when it calmed down, left embers still burning and ready to 
flame forth again—as it did in 1847. Great names of statesmen as 
well as ecclesiastics were prominent in the fray, and came out of it 
with a somewhat damaged reputation. The Archbishop (Howley) 
makes a poor figure throughout. The Duke of Wellington did not 
add to his glory. His attitude in the House of Lords in reference 
to Dr. Hampden’s explanations was neither magnanimous nor intel¬ 
ligent. Mr. Gladstone, long afterwards, in 1856, had the grace to 
write to Dr. Hampden, expressing regret for his concurrence in the 
vote of the University. He had not taken actual part in it, but was 
only prevented from doing so “ by an accident.” The letter is alike 
honorable to the writer and to the Bishop, all whose “heretical” 
troubles were by this time past. There is one other famous name 
in the renewed persecution of 1847 that bore to the last the unhappy 
dint of encounter with Dr. Hampden. It is one of the melancholy 
lessons of the history of religious opinion that the interests, or sup¬ 
posed interests, of Christian Faith should too often overcome the 
interests of righteousness and fair dealing. And it is sad, but true, 
that the names of Samuel Wilberforce and John Henry Newman 
should both bear the scar of “unfairness” in dealing with this mat¬ 
ter, which the most ingenious defences of their friends have wholly 
failed to remove, f In comparison with his host of persecutors, the 


* March 22,1836. 

t In vindication of what is said in the text as to Dr. Newman, it is 
enough to quote a single sentence from a letter of Bishop Wilberforce 
to the Bishop of Exeter, when the movement against Dr. Hampden so 
entirely collapsed in 1848. He is defending himself to his friend for his 



THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 51 


character of Hampden himself, uninteresting as he may have been, 
shines forth with consistent lustre. I will venture on a further 
statement, which is true at least to my own experience, astounding 
as it may be to conventional theologians on one side and the other, 
that there are seeds of thought in Dr. Hampden’s writings far more 
fertile and enduring than any to be found in the writings of his 
chief opponents. There is hardly one of the principles for which 
he contended—the supremacy of Scripture over tradition; the in¬ 
dependence of spiritual religion both of theological nomenclature 
and Sacramental usage; above all the great distinction of the truth 
as it is in Scripture from the later dogmatic forms in which it has 
been embodied—that have not since more or less commended them¬ 
selves to all rational theologians. Forgotten as they now are, and 
never in any sense popular, the student of Christian thought will 
always turn to the Bampton Lectures of 1832 with interest and 
profit. 

A few words must suffice for the two other names which, although 
not belonging to the Oriel school, were so far animated by the same 
spirit at the same time. These names in their full significance be¬ 
long, we have already said, to a later period in the history of relig¬ 
ious opinion. They are rightly noticed here, however, because both 
struck, in the years of the “Noetic” school, a note of theological 
advance which resounded widely amid the so-called “heretical” 
noises of the time. Thirlwall’s translation of Schleiermacher’s Es¬ 
say on St. Luke, with a lengthened introduction, appeared in 1825. 
The translator was not then even a clergyman. He was a student 
at Lincoln’s Inn, in preparation for the career of the barrister. Con- 
nop Thirlwall, however, had from his early Cambridge days been 


having withdrawn the prosecution against Dr. Hampden: “ I can only 
account for my words seeming to mean more by my writing in some in¬ 
dignation at the unfairness of the Extracts [by which Dr. Newman sought 
to condemn Dr. Hampden], an unfairness I had pointed out to Newman in 
1836.” This is the statement not of an enemy, or of Dr. Arnold, but of a 
friend, and in 1836 a co-operator. Further, as to Dr. Wilberforce himself, 
and the eclipse which his name suffered in connection with the second 
prosecution of Dr. Hampden, I would refer readers to vol. i., c. vi., of the 
well-known “Life.” It is one of the saddest chapters in an entertain¬ 
ing, but by no means edifying, book. The dislike of Dr. Hampden by 
High Church writers to this day is quite “phenomenal,” as the newspa¬ 
pers say. Witness a review of Dr. Mozley’s Letters in the Spectator of 15th 
Nov., 1884, where he is roundly abused not only as “a dull writer and 
confused thinker, but an intolerant bigot till he became a bishop!” 
How strangely inextinguishable is the fire of old ecclesiastical feuds! 





52 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


almost as much interested in theology as in literature and history. 
Pascal’s “Thoughts” was one of his choicest studies. He contem¬ 
plated learning Hebrew while still at school. His visit to Germany 
and acquaintance with Bunsen before 1820, not to speak of his “ in¬ 
separable” friendship with Julius Charles Hare, strengthened his 
interest in sacred and critical studies; and shortly after the publica¬ 
tion of the “ Essay on St. Luke,” he abandoned the legal for a cler¬ 
ical career. The publication of this essay, according to Dean Per- 
owne, the editor of Thirlwall’s very interesting letters, “was an 
epoch in the history of English theology,” as well as in Thirl wall’s 
own life.* The volume is entirely critical in its character, and 
✓ could hardly have been read beyond the circle of the learned. The 
explanation of the interest which it created is to be found in the 
prevalent stagnation of the theological atmosphere at the time, and 
the current notions that any critical inquiry into the composition of 
the books of Scripture, and of the Gospels in particular, was inimi¬ 
cal to the full acceptance of their sacred character. Biblical criti- 


* The latter statement is made specially in allusion to the fact that 
the publication of the Essay may be said to have procured for him his 
bishopric. Lord Melbourne, who had taken an interest in his career 
from the first, read the Essay, with the Introduction, and was much 
struck by both. He had wished, therefore, to promote Thirlwall even 
earlier to the Episcopal bench, but the bishops whom he consulted “ ex¬ 
pressed a want of confidence ” in the orthodoxy of the volume ! In 1840, 
however, when the See of St. David’s fell vacant, he appointed him at 
once to the vacancy, and a graphic account has been preserved (see Tor¬ 
rens’s “ Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne,” vol. ii., pp. 330-332) of the in¬ 
terview which took place between the Premier and the Bishop-designate. 
When Thirlwall waited upon him, Melbourne was in bed, surrounded with 
letters and newspapers, but immediately opened the conversation. “ Very 
glad to see you; sit down, sit down; hope you are come to say you accept; 
I only wish you to understand that I don’t intend, if I know it, to make 
a heterodox bishop. I don’t like heterodox bishops. As men they may 
be very good anywhere else, but I don’t think they have any business on 
the bench. I take great interest,” he continued, “ in theological ques¬ 
tions,” pointing to a pile of folio editions of the Fathers. “ They are 
excellent reading, and very amusing; some time or other we must have 
a talk about them. I sent your edition of Schleiermacher to Lambeth, 
and asked the Primate to tell me candidly what he thought of it; and, 
look, here are his notes on the margin; pretty copious too. He does not 
concur in all your opinions, but he says there is nothing heterodox in 
your book.” It is a fact deserving notice that it w'as to Lord Melbourne 
also that Hampden’s appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity was 
owing, and expressly on the ground “of profound theological knowledge,” 
combined with “a liberal spirit of inquiry tempered by due caution!” 



THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 53 

cism, notwithstanding the labors of Bishop Marsh in the begin¬ 
ning of the century, was so dead in England that even Christian 
scholars shrank from any real sifting into sources or text. The 
inquiries of German theologians, so far as known, were looked upon 
with suspicion. The Bampton Lecturer of 1824, Mr. Conybeare, 
had sounded a note of alarm regarding them, which was taken up, 
as we shall see in our next lecture, by Hugh James Rose and others. 
The sacerdotal influences which were beginning to move Oxford 
were equally hostile with Puritanism to all German criticism and 
divinity. Then as always, even to our own time, German theologi¬ 
ans of the most varying tendency were slumped together as equally 
heterodox. As Thirlwall himself wrote, “It would almost seem 
as if at Oxford the knowledge of German subjected a Divine to the 
same suspicion of heterodoxy which was attached some centuries 
back to the knowledge of Greek.” Particularly the hypotheses 
which had then begun in Germany, and which were destined to run 
in-such endless series, as to the composition of the Gospels, and their 
relation ro one another, were viewed with jealousy as being, in the 
words of a once well-known book,* “not only detrimental to the 
character of the sacred writers, but also as diminishing the value 
and importance of their testimony, and further, as tending to sap 
the inspiration of the New Testament.” The mere fact that the 
Biblical studies of the age were mainly pursued under the guidance 
of this book—not without value in its day, but entirely uncritical 
in its spirit and method—is the best evidence of how low these stud¬ 
ies had sunk, and how little the theological mind of the time was 
prepared to welcome such an Essay as Thirlwall introduced to it. 

His “Introduction” is a singularly enlightened, closely reasoned, 
and wise piece of writing, like all the theological disquisitions in the 
shape of “ Charges ” that long afterwards came from his pen. He 
admits at ortfce the inconsistency of such inquiries as those of Schlei- 
ermacher and his forerunner Eichhorn and others with the long pre¬ 
vailing doctrine of verbal inspiration—a doctrine, however, which, 
although still generally received, he esteems so entirely abandoned 
by the learned as not to require refutation. Nor does he think the 
more flexible theories of inspiration, as divided into “inspiration of 
suggestion” and “inspiration of superintendency,”any more tenable 
in°the face of the facts which the text of Scripture brings before us. 
He turns rather with approval to the “old opinion” that Scripture 
is indeed inspired, but only in its substance and spirit—“ in the con¬ 
tinual presence and action of what is most vital and essential in 


* Horae’s “Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the 
Holy Scriptures” (1818). 





54 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Christianity itself. ” And this, the only true and tenable view con¬ 
sistent with the actual character of the Biblical Literature, has no 
need, he says, to fear “any investigation into the mutual relation 
and origin of the Gospels.” 

This was a strong and bold attitude in 1825, before Coleridge’s 
“Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit” had seen the light. It shows 
plainly how the critical spirit was working in many minds. There 
is no evidence of Coleridge having exercised any special influence 
over Thirlwall, notwithstanding the latter’s close friendship with 
Hare, and participation in many of his sympathies. The connec¬ 
tion of the two friends was on the side of philology and history 
rather than of philosophy. Thirlwall’s mind, moreover, was cast in 
a quite different mould. Its highest attribute was a dry light with¬ 
out any mystic depths or philosophic aspirations. Changing his 
career after mature deliberation, he carried with him into the Church 
the same compass and balance of judicial faculty which would have 
made him one of the greatest lawyers, as they made him, intellect¬ 
ually, the greatest bishop of his time. No one on the contemporary 
bench can be named with him in mere intellectual magnanimity and 
power. There were other non-Episcopal names greater in theologi¬ 
cal insight and in the sustained contributions which they made to 
sacred literature. But there were none who brought a more massive 
learning or more rational lucidity to the discussion of theological 
questions. He was a true Christian sage, fitted to take his place in 
the innermost circle of the sages of all time. And it was well, as 
Dean Stanley says, that this was so, and that a bishop of such mas¬ 
sive intellectuality and large wisdom should have been one of the 
ruling spirits of our time. 

The name of Milman does not pale beside that of Thirlwall. 
There are those, indeed, who esteem it a still more brilliant name in 
sacred literature. So far both were alike. They never acquired 
the sort of popular distinction that waits on the leaders of great 
ecclesiastical parties—men of the stamp of the late Dr. Wilberforce 
or Dr. Pusey. Distinction of this kind was alien to their nature. 
Just because they were men of large intellectual vision, and bore the 
crown of literary as well as theological genius, they were unfitted to 
be party men, or to soil their garments in the mire of ecclesiastical 
contention. Both spent their lives more or less in their study, rather 
than in the religious world. And so there has not come to either 
the kind of fame which resounds in this world, and which is apt to 
be the reverberation of a common noise, rather than the intelligent 
appreciation of intelligent minds. Milman is probably less known 
than even Thirlwall. I have met with people of education, and 
some degree of culture, who were, if not ignorant of his name, igno- 


THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 55 

rant of all he has done. They were astonished to hear him spoken 
of as a great historian. They had never read a word of his “His¬ 
tory of Latin Christianity,” nor even of his “History of the Jews.” 
They had never heard of him as one of the greatest names that the 
Church of England has ever produced. In combination of pure 
genius with learning, of sweep of thought with picturesque and 
powerful variety of literary culture and expression, he has always 
seemed to me by far the first of modern English Churchmen. 

Henry Hart Milman was educated at Oxford, and was a conspicu¬ 
ous man there during both the earlier and later Oriel movements. 
He was distinguished as a poet as early as 1820; and although his 
poetry has failed to live, save in a few hymns, it remains an interest¬ 
ing monument of the early glow and splendor of his genius. ‘ ‘ The 
Fall of Jerusalem” and “The Martyr of Antioch” contain passages 
of great power and beauty; but, like the poetic efforts of a great 
female genius of our times, they are lacking in creative art and 
movement. They are poetical essays, rather than poems springing 
spontaneously and irresistibly out of the heart and imagination of 
the writer. Poems of this secondary class, however fine in part, 
never survive. Already, in 1827, Milman was Bampton Lecturer as 
well as Poet; and his genius seems to have been recognized by the 
different schools of thought that had risen or were rising within the 
University. The eleve of Brazenose College, and Professor of Poetry, 
did not, however, join himself to any of these schools. Before the 
date of his Bampton Lectures he had already diverged into paths of 
inquiry entirely separating him from traditionary Anglicanism. An 
Anglo-Catholic of the Keble or Newman type he could never have 
been with all his poetic and concrete tastes. But he did not any 
more connect himself with the “Noetic” school. Whately and 
Hampden could hardly have been congenial to him. From the 
first, however, he belonged to the school of inquiry and not of tra¬ 
dition. He had imbibed the same critical spirit and love of original 
historic research that we find in Arnold and Hare and Thirlwall. 
He had made himself, as they had done, familiar with German 
learning, and entered as early as they had done upon the application 
of its principles to history. Not only so, but he had chosen for this 
purpose the most difficult of all departments, the history of the 
Jews, which, as he himself said, had been looked upon as forbidden 
ground. He resolved that there was nothing in so-called sacred 
history, any more than in the history of Greece or Rome, to exempt 
it from the laws of criticism. The same principles which proved so 
fertile in the one case would yield no less rich results in the other. 
This was the key-note to the great work to which he had conse¬ 
crated his life, while Whately was still busy with his Essays, and 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


50 

Arnold was writing his Sermons. The “History of the Jews,” in 
three small volumes of the Family Library, was published in 1829. 

No sooner were the volumes made public than they raised a wild 
commotion, not only in England but in Scotland. All the current 
religious magazines assailed them as subversive of the supernatural 
in Scripture, and generally tending to minimize or degrade the idea 
of Divine Revelation. The Christian Instructor, the once well- 
known organ of the evangelical party in the Church of Scotland, 
while acknowledging the “captivating style of the book, and the 
felicity and attractiveness of its historical pictures, is forced deeply 
to lament that it should ever have seen the light, especially as part 
of the Family Library, intended for domestic use.” So violent 
proved the noise against the book, and so persistent the prejudices 
with which it was assailed, that the publisher was forced to stop 
the series of which it formed a part. 

What, then, is the real character of the book? It is a charming 
and attractive narrative. Forty years ago it charmed me more than 
I can well recall and express. For the first timd one felt the heroes 
of the Old Testament, and the institutions and usages of the Hebrew 
people, described with a vividness and reality that made them live 
before the mind’s eye, and brought them within the sphere of fact, 
rather than of pulpit convention. Strange, this was one of the very 
accusations against the History. It spoke of Abraham as an “ East¬ 
ern Sheik ” or “Emir,” of the “ quiet and easy Isaac,” of the “cau¬ 
tious, observant, subtle, and kind Jacob.” It pointed to the undoubt¬ 
ed fact that we do not find even in Abraham “that nice and lofty 
sense of veracity which came with a later civilization. ” It explained 
the overthrow of the cities of Sodom by the inflammable character 
of the soil on which, and of the materials with which, they were 
built. It made nothing of the then received chronology of the Bi¬ 
ble, which has really no higher authority than Archbishop Ussher 
in the seventeenth century. It recognized the exaggeration of the 
Scriptural numbers so obvious to every intelligent reader, and natu¬ 
rally arising out of the circumstances. ‘ ‘ All kinds of numbers, ” as 
the author afterwards explained,* “ are uncertain in ancient MSS., 
and have been subject to much greater corruption than any other 
part of the text.” And so long ago as the time of Bishop Burnet, 
the matter was left to the free judgment of the clergy of the Church 
of England. It explained naturally the passage of the Red Sea, and 
generally brought the light of criticism to bear upon “the Eastern 
veil of Allegory ” in which much of the narrative of the Old Testa¬ 
ment is invested. Doubtless at the time these were startling features 


* New Edition, Preface, 1863. 



THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL AND ITS CONGENERS. 57 

in a “History of the Jews,” and those who are familiar with the 
state of the religious world then and long afterwards will not wonder 
at the violent excitement which it raised. In truth, however, Mil- 
man, in the light of such Old Testament criticism as we are now fa¬ 
miliar with, must be pronounced a highly conservative historian. 
Our modern schools would, I fear, judge him “unscientific.” He 
repudiated in good faith any anti-supernatural bias, and deliberately 
separated himself from the extreme school of modern criticism. Its 
spirit of endless analysis and love for turning everything upside 
down was thoroughly uncongenial to his mind. He had too much 
imagination, as well as faith and sobriety of temper, for such work; 
and he remained to the end what he was plainly from the first, an 
historical genius who, while urged by his critical powers to sift ev¬ 
erything to the bottom and to take nothing for granted merely be¬ 
cause it was connected with traditional theology, was yet no less 
urged by his poetic and concrete tastes to paint a picture rather than 
give a mere tableau of critical processes. Erudite as any German, 
and familiar to the time of his death (1868) with the latest results of 
German critical speculation, he was yet, in the moulding power of 
his great intellect and his large knowledge of life and literature—in 
short, in his gifts as an historic artist—as unlike as possible to the 
common type of German theologian. He was thoroughly English 
in his tastes; and his main distinction, like that of Whately and Ar¬ 
nold and Hampden, was his clear recognition of the difference be¬ 
tween a simple and traditional Christianity, between what is essen¬ 
tial to religion and what is temporary and extraneous to it. This 
thought pervades his earlier History; it is emphasized in the Preface 
to the new and enlarged edition of 1863. It is the closing thought 
of his great “ History of Latin Christianity.” Whatever part of our 
ancient dogmatic systems, he says, may fall into disuse, “as beyond 
the proper range of human thought and language,” and however far 
the “Semitic portions” of the sacred records may have to submit 
to “wider interpretation” “in order to harmonize them with the 
irrefutable conclusions of science,” the “unshadowed essence” of 
Divine Truth as enshrined in the words of Christ, “the primal and 
indefeasible truths of Christianity,” will live forever. All else is 
transient and mutable—dogmatic form—sacramental usage—ecclesi¬ 
astical rite. That which in its very nature is changing, and which 
the history of the Church shows to have already changed many 
times, cannot be enduring. But the “truth as it is in Jesus ” “ shall 
not pass away,” “clearer, fuller, more comprehensive and balanced” 
as may become our view of it. Here the very note of the “ Noetic ” 
school is struck, and Milman therefore deserves a place by the side 
of it. He is greater than most if not all of the school, but it is the 
same liberal spirit which speaks in it and in him. 


58 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


III. 

OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 

What is known as the Oxford Movement had its first beginnings 
in the same centre of intellectual life as the early Oriel School. It 
sprang as a secondary crop from the same soil. The early Oriel 
men had all attained to maturity by the year 1825. Hampden, the 
youngest, was then thirty-two years of age.* * * § Keble was the oldest 
of the new Oxford group, f and chronologically, as we before remark¬ 
ed, may be said to blend the schools. He was a fellow of Oriel be¬ 
fore either Arnold or Hampden.:}: The same “Oriel Common 
Room” where so many “learned and able, not rarely subtle and 
disputatious conversations took place,” found those men frequently 
together in the later years of the second decade of the century. § 
Who can tell whether the seeds of the great reaction against liberal¬ 
ism, which Keble formally commenced, may not have been sown as 
far back as those discussions? But the author of the “Christian 
Year ” did not need any provocation to the course on which he enter¬ 
ed. He was from the first an Anglican of the Anglicans. Unlike 
Newman, he had no evangelical or liberal preconceptions to get rid 
of. He was a Tory of the old school, to whom the Church of Eng¬ 
land was not only dear, but to whom there was no other Church, f 
The “ Christian Year ” had already appeared in 1827, and when the 
strain of the liberal storm came in 1882, and all the spirit of the young 
Oxford Churchmen was stirred within them, it was only natural 
that he, quiet but intensely dogmatic as he was, should have taken 
a temporary lead. Dr. Newman has expressly signalized his famous 


* Born 1793. 

+ Born 1792. Pusey was born 1800; J. H. Newman 1801. 

\ Keble was elected Probationer Fellow in 1811. Hampden became fel¬ 
low in 1814; Arnold in 1815. 

§ Keble fancied that he had quitted Oxford officially in 1817, but he be¬ 
came college tutor in the end of the year, and remained more or less 
closely connected with the college till 1823. 

|| Yet he says in one of his letters to his biographer, Sir J. T. Coleridge, 
“I was myself inclined to Eclecticism at one time.” A very mild incli¬ 
nation of this sort may have marked his earliest Oriel days, but no trace 
of it remains in any of his writings. 



OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 59 

Assize Sermon in the summer of 1833,* * * § and published under the 
title of “ National Apostasy,” as the formal beginning of the move¬ 
ment.! 

The same master-hand has sketched the general influences under 
which the movement arose. The new literary spirit of the time, the 
poetry of the Lake School, the mediaeval romanticism of Sir Walter 
Scott, the philosophy of Coleridge, all bore their share in deepening 
men’s thoughts and awakening the thirst after nobler ideas in religion 
as in other things. It is a special tribute to the far-reaching genius 
of our countryman that his romances should have not only been the 
delight of thousands, but should have stimulated the enthusiasm for 
a richer culture, and prepared the mental soil everywhere for larger 
conceptions of society and of the Church. As may be supposed, the 
opinion expressed.by Newman of Coleridge is a modified, while a 
highly significant one. ‘ ‘ While history in prose and verse,” he says, 
“was thus made the instrument of Church feelings and opinions, a 
philosophical basis for the same was laid in England by a very orig¬ 
inal thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of speculation which 
no Christian can tolerate, yet after all instilled a higher philosophy 
into inquiring minds than they had hitherto been accustomed to ac¬ 
cept. In this way he made trial of his age, and succeeded in inter¬ 
esting its genius in the cause of Catholic truth.”! 

During the crisis which followed the Reform Bill of 1832, there 
were evidently two currents of religious opinion running strongly— 
the one more or less in sympathy with the prevailing liberalism, and 
the other strongly against it. This latter current was reactionary; 
but it was something more. It was negative—opposed to liberalism 
in Church and State—but it also contained within itself a new and 
creative conservatism, one of the chief principles of which was a 
fresh organization of the Church. § This is apparent to all in the 
sequel of events. But what is less understood is the extent to which 
these two currents crossed each other and intermingled before they 
took their respective directions. They not only for a time lay side 
by side in the bosom of Oriel College, but both the men who in the 
end led the conservative reaction for a time inclined to liberalism. 

Dr. Newman has told us this of himself. He says, indeed, that 
whatever may have been Wliately’s influence over him, he was never 
inclined to his theology. Yet in the very same breath he tells us 

* 14th July. t “ Apologia,” p. 100. 

X “Apologia,” p. 185, quoted from an article by himself in the British 

Critic , 1839. 

§ This is true of Scotland as well as England. The parallelism between 
the rise of High Churehism in England and Scotland during the decade 
1832-42 has yet to be intelligently described. 



00 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


that there was a time in his Oriel experience when he was beginning 
“to prefer intellectual excellence to moral.” He “ was drifting in 
the direction of liberalism,” and commonly understood, as we shall 
see, to be a follower of Whately. The case of Dr. Pusey is a more 
remarkable one. This great theologian and leader, so identified with 
the highest development of the dogmatic spirit in England, was, in 
the beginning of his career, supposed to be and vigorously denounced 
as a theological liberal. And there was good ground for the suppo¬ 
sition. From the time that he obtained his Oriel fellowship, in 1822, 
to the date of his first publication, in 1828, the line of his main in¬ 
quiry and thought ran in an eminently rational direction. He had 
been abroad—attracted, like other young minds of the time, by the 
phenomena of German theology—and he gave the result of his stud¬ 
ies to 4he world in a brief “Historical Inquiry into the Probable 
Causes of the Rationalist Character of German Theology.” A sec¬ 
ond and larger part -was added in 1830, after the author had become 
Regius Professor of Hebrew—an office retained by him during his 
long life. 

The motif of Dr. Pusey’s book was not indeed a vindication of 
German Theology in its rationalistic developments. It was, how¬ 
ever, a defence of it from the indiscriminate assaults contained in 
“Discourses preached before the University of Cambridge, by Hugh 
James Rose,” and published by him, in 1825, under the title of “The 
State of Protestantism in Germany.” Rose has been panegyrized 
by Dr. Newman. He was, so to speak, a Tractarian before the Trac- 
tarians, a man of warmth and energy, with fine sensibilities, and an 
enthusiastic love of what he believed to be divine truth. He must 
have had many high qualities to have left such an impression as he 
has done, not only on Dr. Newman’s mind, but on many minds of a 
different order. But he had also many of the vices of his school— 
invincible prejudice, incapacity of discrimination, ignorance of his¬ 
toric method, lack of tolerance and sympathy beyond the range of 
the Church of England.* In contrast to Rose’s book, Pusey’s is an 

* The spirit of Rose’s book may be judged from the following sentence: 
“If it be essential to a Protestant Church to possess a constant power 
of varying her belief” [by which he means revising her standards of belief], 
“let us remember that ours is assuredly no Protestant Church.” We can, 
of course, only judge of Rose from his book, which is not in any sense a 
good or worthy book; but a man is so often much better than his books, 
especially if they are polemical, that the feeling entertained by some of 
Hugh James Rose that he was the most intelligent and high-minded of 
the theologians who set the Anglo-Catholic movement agoing, and that 
its course would have been different if he had been spared, may be well 
founded. Bishop Wordsworth, of St. Andrew’s, has expressed this opin¬ 
ion strongly to the writer. 





OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 


61 


eminently fair, reasonable, and candid inquiry, liberal, in the best 
sense of the word, as recognizing what is good no less than what is 
bad in German theology, and especially as setting the worst phases 
of German rationalism in the light of the causes which have operated 
in producing them. The author was no more in love with rational¬ 
ism than Mr. Rose, but he understood, as the former jfid not do, all 
the phenomena which went under that name, what varying shades 
of truth and falsehood they presented, and by what intelligible links 
they were connected with one another. Nothing, indeed, is more 
remarkable in Dr. Pusey’s work than the breadth and power of his¬ 
torical analysis it displays, its extreme fairness; and even to this day, 
when so many accounts have been given of the historical develop¬ 
ment of German theology from different points of view, it still de¬ 
serves perusal. 

The result, as may be supposed, was that Pusey was denounced as 
a defender of rationalism. The liberal spirit which he had shown 
in the study of strange opinions could only proceed from a theolog¬ 
ical liberal. He was accused, among other things, of “an intem¬ 
perate opposition to all articles,” a “hatred of all systems,” of im¬ 
pugning “the inspiration of the historical parts of Scripture,” 
of speaking of “a new era of theology ” [as if there could be such 
a thing], “of scattering doubts on the truth of the genuineness of 
Scripture. ” This was the reward of his dealing fairly with a diffi¬ 
cult subject. It is pathetic to think of hjs early and his later career, 
and how little his experience of the poisoned weapons with which 
he had been assailed in his youthful and more intelligent enthusi¬ 
asm, should have taught him the Christian duty of always under¬ 
standing what he opposed, and of fairly construing the motives of 
those who differed from him. Doubtless the dogmatic temper was 
strong in him from the first, notwithstanding his large knowledge 
and the higher historical temper which he everywhere shows. His 
place in the new movement will appear definitely as we advance. 
In the mean time we must turn to the true soul of the first stage of 
the movement — Newman himself, and his friend Richard Hurrell 
Froude. The “Apologia pro vita su&” is still our best text-book on 
the subject. Mr. Mozley’s “ Reminiscences ” had added hardly any¬ 
thing of substantive importance to its history. 

John Henry Newman is almost as old as the century, having been 
born in the beginning of 1801. The son of a London banker, who 
had married the daughter “ of a well-known Huguenot family, ” he 
was surrounded by religious influences from his youth, and at the 
age of fifteen became, under Calvinistic guidance, and the study 
especially of a work of Romaine’s, the subject of “an inward con¬ 
version,” of which be says (1864) “ I am still more certain than that 


62 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


I have hands and feet.” Five years before, Dr. Chalmers, very 
much under the same influences, but at a more mature age, became 
the subject of a similar change. Newman retained his Calvinistic 
impressions till the age of twenty-one, although never accepting cer¬ 
tain conclusions supposed to be identified with Calvinism—the doc¬ 
trine of reprobation, for example. A well-known evangelical writer, 
greatly studied and admired in the beginning of this century, Thom¬ 
as Scott, now chiefly remembered for his Scripture Commentary, 
“made a deeper impression on his mind than any other.” To him 
(“humanly speaking”), he says, “I almost owe my soul.” His death 
in 1821 “ came upon me as a disappointment as well as a sorrow. I 
hung upon the lips of Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Cal¬ 
cutta, as in two sermons at St. John’s Chapel he gave the history 
of Scott’s lifS and death. I had been possessed of his Essays 
from a boy; his Commentary I bought when I was an under¬ 
graduate.” 

Newman early showed a dogmatic as well as a religious turn. He 
made a collection of Scripture texts in proof of the doctrine of the 
Trinity before he was sixteen, and a few months later he drew up a 
series of texts in support of each verse of the Athanasian Creed. 
Two other books, he says, greatly delighted him—Joseph Milner’s 
“Church History” and Newton on the “Prophecies.” There are, 
I dare say, some here who remember how common these books were 
in all religious households fifty years ago. They recall the fra¬ 
grance of a home piety from the tender thought of which no good 
mind would willingly part. Newman tells us how much he was 
enamoured of the long extracts from St. Augustine and the other 
Fathers in Milner’s History, and how he learned from Newton to 
identify the Pope with Antichrist, a doctrine by which, he adds, his 
imagination “ was stained up to the year 1843,” or till he was forty- 
two years of age. 

At the age of twenty-one (1822), nearly two years after he had 
taken his degree, “ he came,” as he tells us, “under very different 
influences.” He passed from Trinity college, where he had gradu¬ 
ated, into Oriel as a fellow, and joined the band of liberal thinkers 
who had been so long working there. How far he was repelled by 
the atmosphere of the place at first—and how far for a time he came 
to sympathize with its intellectual spirit — it is difficult to say be¬ 
yond what he has himself told us. During his first year of resi¬ 
dence he says that, “though proud of his College,” he “was not at 
home there.” He was very much alone, and used to walk by him¬ 
self. Again, we have seen, he describes himself as, some years later, 
leaning to intellectualism, and even as “drifting in the direction of 
liberalism.” With all the apparent frankness of .the “Apologia,” 


OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 


63 


there is no doubt much still to learn as to those years, and the full 
history of Newman’s religious opinions will only be known when we 
know more of the steps of his transition from Evangelicalism to 
High Churchism, and how far he took Liberalism on his way. Dur¬ 
ing much of the time at Oriel that followed his appointment as a 
fellow, or from 1823 to the end of 1827, he was, according to his 
brother-in-law,* identified with Whately. “ It would not have been 
easy,” he says, “to state the difference between their respective 
views.” Newman’s religiousness, however, was always “conspic¬ 
uous,” and his instinct to conserve and build the fabric of Divine 
Truth, as well as to analyze and expose any part that seemed un¬ 
sound. He hated from the first any movement of destruction. 
‘ ‘ He used to talk of the men who lash the waters to frighten the 
fish, when they have made no preparation to catch them.” Proba¬ 
bly no one who then knew Newman could have told which way he 
would go in the end. With a keenly inquisitive mind disposed to 
search to the root of religious problems, he was too logical*, too dog¬ 
matic; to be satisfied with Whately’s position; and the latter soon 
discovered that Newman’s was a spirit beyond his leading. He may 
have been wrong in saying that Newman was looking “to be the 
head of a party ” himself; and yet there is a side of his character 
that suggests this view. He had a great love of personal influence. 
From the first he attracted by his personality rather than by his in¬ 
telligence—by the authority rather than the rationality of his opin¬ 
ions. He never seems to have understood any other kind of influ¬ 
ence. In this kind he was supreme. He did not require to go in 
search of friends or followers. They gathered spontaneously around 
him, and there almost necessarily sprang out of this feature of his 
character a high ambition. Copleston seems dimly to have seen 
such a future in him, and all to have recognized beneath his shy¬ 
ness the growth of a new power. 

The same year (1827) which saw the publication of Keble’s won¬ 
derful volume is marked by a decisive advance in Newman’s views. 
Illness and bereavement, he says, came to him with awakening ef¬ 
fect. He had made the acquaintance of Hurrell Froude the year 
before, and began to feel the sway of his impetuous genius. In 1828 
Hurrell Froude brought him and Keble together. Keble had pre¬ 
viously been rather shy of him, he says, “in consequence of the 
marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal schools;” 
but their conjunction, under the guidance of Froude, laid the springs 
of the movement which burst forth five years later. Henceforth 
Newman bore no more traces either of Evangelicalism or Liberal- 


*Mr. Mozley married in 1836 Newman’s elder sister, 












64 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


ism. All fell away from him in the rush of new thoughts which 
were to carry him forward in his destined path. 

Of Richard Hurrell Froude it is difficult to speak with confidence. 
He was, no doubt, as his brother tells us, “gifted, brilliant, enthusi¬ 
astic—an intellectual autocrat, ” with the dashing, audacious charac¬ 
teristics of such a nature. Newman’s estimate is more detailed. 
“He was a man,” he says, “of the highest gifts—so truly many- 
sided that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe 
him, except under those aspects in which he came before me. Nor 
have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the 
playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, 
and the patient, winning considerateness in discussion, which en¬ 
deared him to those to whom he opened his heart. ” Again, he says, he 
was ‘ ‘ a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing with ideas and 
views, in him original, and which were too many and too strong even 
for his bodily strength, and which crowded and jostled against each 
other in their effort after distinct shape and expression. His opin¬ 
ions arrested and influenced me even when they did not gain my 
assent. ” The two volumes of ‘ ‘ Remains ” published after his death, 
in 1836, so far bear out this impression of a lively and versatile 
genius, warm-hearted and dashing. But the faults of such a genius 
are still more conspicuous than the merits. The volumes are full 
of violent misjudgments, riotous prejudice, silly introspection, and 
here and there of downright nonsense. It fills one with amazement, 
I confess, that men like Keble and Newman should have sanctioned, 
even taken a pleasure in their publication. Many of the sayings are 
more like those of a foolish, clever boy than anything else. Bred in 
ecclesiastical toryism, with “the contempt of an intellectual aristo¬ 
crat for private judgment and the rights of man,” Hurrell Froude’s 
Oxford learning seems not only to have fostered his essentially nar¬ 
row spirit, but to have added to it a species of intellectual petulance 
which would be offensive if it were not ludicrous in absurdity.* 

It is impossible to estimate highly the promise of such a genius; 
and the “ Remains ” are now, with all their crude jauntiness, very 
dull reading. They have none of the bright vivacity of Sterling’s 
essays, or the spontaneous humor that might redeem their petulance. 
There are no seeds of thought in them—nothing, for happy suggest- 

* Witness the following : “ Really I bate the Reformation and the Re¬ 
formers more and more. How beautifully the Edinburgh Review [1835] 
has shown up Luther, Melanchthon & Co.” “ Your trumpery principle 
about Scripture being the sole rule of Faith,” etc. Again, of a different 
kind: “Looked with greediness to see if there was goose on the table. 
Meant to have kept a fast, and did abstain from dinner, but at tea ate 
buttered toast.” . . j 







OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 


65 


iveness or rich if immature power, fitted to live in any mortal mem¬ 
ory. The extravagance is often little more than ignorance, and the 
audacity impudence. Probably the author would have become 
wiser if he had lived. He seems to have had ample knowledge on 
such subjects as Church Architecture and Ancient Liturgies. Con¬ 
fessedly his ‘ ‘ religious views never reached their ultimate conclu¬ 
sion.” It must remain doubtful, however, whether a man so lack¬ 
ing in sense at the age of thirty-two, would have ever grown into 
wise activity. The combination which he presents of formal defer¬ 
ence to authority with essential irreverence is especially to be noted. 
Episcopacy is sacred to him, but the individual bishop contemptible. 
All is right which he thinks right—nothing good which does not com¬ 
mend itself to his uninformed and headstrong judgment. To what 
this spirit has come in ecclesiastical England it is needless to say. 
The strange thing is that a temper like this, so conspicuously typified 
in Froude, and so largely represented in the party which he helped to 
form, should have believed that it was destined to regenerate English 
Christianity, and to make it once more a living national power. 

Newman evidently saw the weak points of his friend, if not ex¬ 
actly in the same light as we have presented them. He confesses 
that Froude had no turn for theology as such, and “no appreciation 
of the writings of the Fathers, or of the detail and development of 
doctrine. ” His great qualities were personal rather than intellectual. 
He was the knight-errant of the party—eager, courageous, opposed 
to what he thought shams or sophistries, all unconscious, like knight- 
errants in general, that his enemies were those of his own disordered 
brain mainly. His impetuosity, however, gave him a sort of influ¬ 
ence. With a singular and sad simplicity Newman says, “It is 
difficult to enumerate the precise addition to my theological creed, 
which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made 
me look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and in the 
same degree to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the 
idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to 
believe in the Real Presence. ” Froude could hardly communicate 
what he did not possess. If he had no turn for theology, he could 
hardly make any worthy addition to anybody’s creed; but his insa¬ 
tiable eagerness made a deep impression upon his friend, and helped 
to incline him towards Rome. Probably the road thither might 
have been found earlier if he had lived. “ Subtleties and nice dis¬ 
tinctions would not have stood in his way. His course would have 
been direct and straightforward.”* This does not tell us much, but 


* The Oxford “ Counter-Reformation,” p. 176. Froude’s “ Short Stud¬ 
ies,” etc., vol. iii. 


5 



66 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


it may be held as indicating the conclusion to which we point. 
Hurrell Froude would have needed no “nice distinctions,”because 
his mind was not of a distinguishing order. He had none of the 
scruples of wide knowledge, or of the rational habit that looks on 
both sides of a question. He had no occasion to “minimize doc¬ 
trines,” or make a wry face over principles, many of which he had 
already swallowed in all their enormity. The only question that 
can remain is whether, had he lived, he would not have carried his 
friend to Rome faster than he travelled. That he should ever have 
taken the lead, or competed with Newman as “ the master-spirit of 
the movement,”* is hardly to be imagined; but his more downright 
and unhesitating impulses would almost certainly have driven the 
movement more rapidly towards its predestined goal. 

We have seen how Froude brought Newman and Keble together 
in 1828. And if he had never done anything else, this was some¬ 
thing, as he supposed, to boast of. “ If I was ever asked, ” he said, 
“what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I had brought 
Keble and Newman to understand each other.” Keble had been 
Hurrell Froude’s tutor, both at Oxford and at his curacy of South- 
rop. He was eleven years older, and no doubt greatly influenced 
Froude, as Froude in turn, according to Newman, acted upon him. 
Both were Tories of the old Cavalier or Anglo-Catholic stamp. 
They believed in the Church not merely as national, but exclusive. 
There was no other Church unless the Oriental* or Roman Catholic. 
They were men of high and honorable spirit, and yet neither their 
reason nor their religion had taught them to acknowledge in men 
differing from them the same honorable and Christian motives they 
claimed for themselves. Froude, with outspoken impetuosity, did 
not hesitate to clothe his judgments in the harsh language which 
naturally became them. Keble’s was a wiser and higher mind. He 
saw around him with a somewhat larger vision. In all personal 
relations he was one of the most tender and affectionate of men. 
Among his friends at Oxford he was not only admired but revered. 
Newman relates with unconscious humor the estimate in which he 
was held. “There’s Keble,” said a friend to him one day walking 
in High Street, “and with what awe did I look at him!” 

Keble’s personal character deserves all that can be said of it. It 
is of the type beautiful, and few could have known him without 
being the better for converse with such a high and gentle nature. 
His poetic and gracious gifts are embalmed in the “ Christian Year, ” 
which has touched so many hearts. There is an ineffable sweet¬ 
ness in its verse. Christian experience may outgrow the savor, 


* Mozley’s “Reminiscences,” vol. i., 125. 



OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 67 

but it lingers like a delightful fragrance in the memory. To Keble, 
as we have already said, more than to any other leader, the Oxford 
Movement was the natural outcome of a course of training and 
thought inbred in him from the first. There was no crisis or strug¬ 
gle in his life, only a deepening sense that Liberalism was evil and 
Anglo-Catholicism the only Christian power in the land. As a fel¬ 
low and tutor at Oriel for about twelve years (1811-1823), he had 
known the earlier Oriel spirit in its full power. If it attracted him 
at all, as he seems in one of his letters to imply,* it must have been 
for a very brief period, and the reaction must have soon followed. 
There was a gentle but immovable obstinacy in his Anglican con¬ 
victions. I have never seen in any one a more steadfast and un¬ 
moved faith—faith not only in the Christian but in the Anglican 
verities. And this is the secret of what must be called, even with 
his higher temper and range of intelligence, his intolerance. It has 
a sort of innocence. It is a Christian virtue. He has no idea how 
essentially offensive it is. Half cradled as the Church of England 
was in Puritanism, it is to him simply evil. He can see nothing 
great or good in it. Political opinions differing from his own are 
not merely mistaken—they are wrong, sinful. In his correspondence 
with his friend and biographer, Sir John Coleridge, he rebuts—in a 
sort of playful way, but with no doubt as to his real meaning—all 
idea that there may J)e good men on both sides of a question. He 
and his friends, he says, call this the Coleridgian heresy. By way 
of apology his biographer says that his convictions were very deep- 
seated. They were “stuff of the conscience.” No doubt. It is 
impossible not to feel that they were essential parts of his spiritual 
and intellectual nature; but while this makes them intelligible and 
respectable, it does not make them the less bigotries. A man is 
responsible for the culture of his reason as well as of his sentiments. 
Keble seems never to have conceived of any religious truth beyond 
the Church of England. All was false and wrong outside of it. 
He loved some who differed from him, among others, Arnold and 
Milman, who loved and admired him in turn, but it was with a sort 
of pity he gave them his affection, as if they were hopelessly in error. 
He delighted to see his little nephew under his teaching snapping 
at all the Roundheads, and kissing all the Cavaliers. You cannot 
be angry at bigotry like this, which smiles upon you, while it frowns 
on your opinions. But it is not admirable in itself. It is mournful. 
It is only its powerlessness that renders it innocuous. It is the child 
of ignorance, quite as much as of faith, f 


* See preceding note, p. 58. 

t Even Mozley admits that Keble’s “ sympathies were very one sided 



68 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Keble did much to encourage Newman in his career. The 
“Christian Year” strengthened in him “ the two main intellectual 
truths ” which he had already learned from Butler—the sacramental 
or typical character of all material phenomena, and the influence 
of probability as the guide of life. All who know the volume will 
remember how constantly, and with what felicity of touch the sights 
and sounds of Nature are made to minister to spiritual instruction 
and discipline ; how rich the natural symbolism of the hymns is 
everywhere; so that Nature becomes the mere veil of the higher 
life, the vesture of Divine communion, the parable of Divine mys¬ 
tery. All this met a deeply responsive chord in Newman, whose 
own poetry, with a deeper and more tragic vein, is full of the same 
symbolism. The principle of probability again played a powerful 
part in the spiritual life of both. Accepted by faith and love, this 
principle became a source of religious certitude. Transmuted by 
trust it was turned into a ground of conviction. The same idea 
pervades many of Keble’s sermons, and it was ultimately worked 
by Newman into the shape of a cardinal doctrine in his “ Grammar 
of Assent.” It would be far too long to discuss it here. I have 
elsewhere carefully examined it,* * and found it at the root — as I 
think all who probe it critically must find it-—to be little more than 
a process of make-belief. Only assent strongly enough to any¬ 
thing, and it will imbed itself in your mental constitution as a verity 
of the first order. But the further question always arises: What 
is the value of a principle of certitude which is, at bottom, planted 
neither in reason nor in evidence, but in the mere force of the grip 
which you yourself take of the thing believed? Faith is good, but 
a faith that is neither enlightened nor determined by facts in the 
shape of evidence, but simply by the blind assent with which the 
mind sets itself upon its object, may be as much a basis of supersti¬ 
tion as of religion. The argument springing out of such faith is ad¬ 
mitted by Dr. Newman himself to be merely “one form of the argu¬ 
ment from authority.” 

Such is a brief sketch of the chief figures engaged in the “ Oxford 
Movement,” and, so far, of the principles which they represented. 
We must note, however, more clearly than we have yet done, the 
several stages of the movement, the causes which led to it, and the 
objects at which it aimed. We cannot within our limits do more, 


and he mentions a curious instance of his intolerance, not otherwise re¬ 
corded, so far as I know, “that he induced a number of his neighbors 
and friends to sign a protest against her Majesty choosing a Lutheran 
Prince for one of her sons’ godfathers.” 

* Edinburgh Review , October, 1870. 



OXFORD OR an<;lo-c1tholic movement. 69 

or extend our view much beyond the time which may be said to be 
measured by the “ Tracts for the Times ” or Tractarianism, as it has 
been specially called. 

Some years before, or from 1828 to 1833, Keble, Newman, and 
Froude were all converging towards some definite action. New¬ 
man’s spirit was warming within him as the dogmatic principle took 
a firmer hold of his mind, and the Church seemed more and more 
threatened by the political agitation surrounding it. Meantime, how¬ 
ever, he was busy with his studies on the ‘ ‘ Arians of the Fourth 
Century,” as Keble was busy in the preparation of his edition of 
Hooker’s “ Ecclesiastical Polity.” These studies deepened the Cath¬ 
olic tendencies of both, as they braced and furnished them for the 
struggle before them. 

All this time the political course of events was fretting them in¬ 
tolerably. Liberalism was not only “in the air,” but had proved 
its ascendency everywhere. Sir Robert Peel, at the time member 
for Oxford, had been forced to give way and introduce his Bill for 
the Emancipation of the Catholics. This led, as may be imagined, 
to a violent commotion at Oxford; heads of Houses divided against 
heads of Houses, and the Dogmatic party, with Keble and Newman 
in front, violently on the Orthodox side. In 1831 and 1832 the po¬ 
litical atmosphere became still more agitated. There was revolution 
in France, direct assaults upon the Church at home. “ The Whigs 
had come into power; Lord Grey had told the Bishops to set their 
•house in order, and some of the Prelates had been insulted and 
threatened in the streets of London.”* All these things made a 
deep impression upon the Oxford group, whom sympathy of feeling 
and opinion had by this time more or less banded together. New¬ 
man’s mind was excited in the highest degree. ‘ ‘ The vital question, ” 
he says,“ was, How were we to keep the Church from being liberal¬ 
ized?” “the true principles of churchmanship seemed so radically 
decayed, and there was such distraction in the councils of the clergy.” 
Keble was less passionately, but hardly less deeply moved. Froude 
required no kindling against the Whigs. He was violent against 
them from the first. He could have forgiven the Reform Bill if it 
had not been for his personal hatred of the Whigs, f Here were the 
abundant materials of an outburst not merely ecclesiastical but po¬ 
litical. It is impossible to ignore the political as well as the intel¬ 
lectual or theological side of the Oxford movement. It was a new 
Toryism, or designed to be such, as well as a new Sacerdotalism. 

Newman’s and Froude’s journey abroad, in the end of 1832 and 
spring of 1833, seems strangely to have acted as a stimulus to their 


* “Apologia,” p. 93. 


t “Remains,” vol. i., p. 250. 




VO MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

ecclesiastical and political excitement rather than as a distraction. 
In the Mediterranean, in Sicily, in Paris,’ “ England was in my 
thoughts solely,” Newman says. “ The Bill for the Suppression of 
the Irish Sees was in progress, and filled my mind. I had fierce 
thoughts against the Liberals. A French vessel was at Algiers; I 
would not even look at the Tricolor,” and so hateful was revolu¬ 
tionary Paris, with all its beauty, that he “kept in-doors the whole 
time ” he was there. It was at this time that he so far forgot his 
Christian charity as to speak of Arnold in the manner we related in 
our last lecture. Such a remark could only have come out of very 
harsh thoughts. Yet we know that he also had softer and tenderer 
thoughts. For it was then, as he lay becalmed in the Straits of 
Bonifacio, that he composed the wonderful lines, ‘ ‘ Lead, kindly 
Light, amid the encircling gloom,” which have touched so many 
hearts and brought the tears of spiritual tenderness to so many 
eyes. 

Keble’s Assize Sermon was preached the very Sunday after New¬ 
man’s return to Oxford. This was as the match applied to a long 
smouldering excitement. Action followed at once. A conference 
was held at Hadleigh; but not much came directly of this. It brought 
together congenial minds, in addition to those already mentioned; 
among others, Mr. William Palmer,* of Dublin University, afterwards 
of Worcester College, who, Newman says, was the only really learned 
man among them, and “understood theology as a science.” But it 
was soon felt that there must be personal action, if anything effective 
was to be done. Mr. Palmer and others were for a committee—“a 
board of safe and sensible men.” But no great movement was ever 
begun or carried forward by a committee or by a system, Newman 
says; and he points with strange audacity to Luther and the Refor¬ 
mation as an example! 

Thus impelled to do something, he hit upon the idea of the 
“Tracts for the Times.” He is careful to point out that the idea 
was his own, and to take all the credit or discredit of the Tractari- 
anism which became the great feature of the movement. He wrote 
or rewrote and revised all the earliest of the famous series. As 
Mozley truly enough says, no one could write a Tract but himself. 
“Others wrote sermons or treatises,”but Newman from first to last 
was the Tractarian par excellence; and, remarkably with the cessa¬ 
tion of the “ Tracts,” eight years later, he may be said to disappear 
from the movement. 

No one but Newman himself—not even he—saw all the signifi¬ 
cance of the Tractarian movement. Keble mentions the publica- 


* Author of the well-known “ Origines Liturgicse.” 



OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 71 

tions, almost accidentally, in a letter.* They are “a paper or two,” 
drawn up by some friends at Oxford, in reference to the present 
state of the Church of England. They are intended “to circulate 
right notions on the apostolical succession, and also for a defence of 
the Prayer-book against any sort of profane innovation.” In Dr. 
Mozley’s recent Letters the project is spoken of in the same accident¬ 
al way,f with some pointed criticism on the peculiarities of New¬ 
man’s style as a Tract-writer. But there is reason to think that 
Newman saw, if not all the consequences of the Tracts (that was 
impossible), something of their real import and moment. He had 
the penetration of genius here as elsewhere, and he did not hesitate 
to give from the first “strong teaching,” as he calls it. He was 
full of the exultation of health and self-confidence. The depres¬ 
sion under which he had lived abroad had passed away—yielded 
to “such a rebound ” that his friends at Oxford hardly knew him. 
No wonder. He had stripped himself clear of all the older integu¬ 
ments which had bound his religious thought and action. He was 
for the time a reformer or restorer of the ancient ways. He had 
taken the “ancient religion of England” under his protection and 
defence. He says of himself, “As to the High Church and the 
Low Church, I thought that the one had not much more of a logical 
basis than the other. I had a thorough contempt for the Evan¬ 
gelical.” 

It is not to be supposed, however, that with all Newman’s energy 
and genius the Tracts were at once successful. For some time they 
were only “as seed cast on the waters.” As we read them now, or 
try to read them, it seems strange that they should have ever moved 
any number of minds. If some were found to be “ heavy reading ” 
at the time, they are now mainly interesting to the theological an¬ 
tiquarian. But this only shows the more how inflammable the 
clerical and lay-clerical mind was at the time. There was a need 
for movement. The Evangelical wave had reached its height, 
and was on the ebb everywhere. The old Anglicanism was not 
dead, but inert, beautiful, but still, or stiffened to hardness in many 
a country parish, but with no life or aggression in it. The liberal¬ 
ism of the Whately school had never penetrated deeply or possessed 
attraction for the average clergyman. The limits of religious thought 
are easily reached in any age. The Tracts, therefore, backed as they 
were by higher teaching from the pulpit, met a want in the relig¬ 
ious aspiration of the time. The “Christian Year” had done not 
a little to awaken this want. The assaults upon the Church from 


* Letter to Dyson; “ Life,” vol. i., p. 220. 
t Mozley’s “Letters,” p. 34. 



72 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


many quarters had, by a natural reaction, strengthened it. The 
genius of Newman—his writing and preaching—did more than all 
else to satisfy it, and in doing so to create an era in the Church of 
England. 

Yet it is his own confession that the new impulse would never 
have become “a power" “if it had remained in his hands." It 
required the accession of another master-spirit to consolidate the 
movement and give it adequate momentum. And this idea of the 
original leader is borne out strongly by the popular name which the 
movement ultimately took—the popular instinct having often in 
such matters a wonderful insight. Of Dr. Pusey we have already 
spoken. He had seemed at first to move on what we must judge a 
higher platform of thought than mere Church-of-Englandism. He 
had not only studied German theology, but he had understood and 
appreciated it. He had shown a certain liberality and largeness of 
mind rare in Anglican Divines. He had the power of entering into 
other theologies than his own. But the evils of the times had also 
come home to him, or the wave of High Churchism had gradually 
submerged all his more rational tendencies (I do not pretend to ex¬ 
plain);* but when the Tractarian movement had been in existence 
for about two years he came to its assistance. Hitherto he had 
stood, if not aloof—for a tract of his on Fasting was printed in the 
series as early as the close of 1833—yet in some degree apart. He 
had not given to the movement his name or influence. But in the 
end of 1835 there appeared his memorable Tract on Baptism, which 
marked an epoch in more senses than one. It drove Frederick Den¬ 
ison Maurice away, frightened at the company he had been keeping. 
It raised the party to a position which it had not hitherto attained. 
No one can describe the effect so well as Dr. Newman himself. “At 
once,” he says, “Dr. Pusey gave to us a position and a name. With¬ 
out him we should have had no chance of making any serious re¬ 
sistance to the Liberal aggression. But Dr. Pusey was a Professor 
and Canon of Christ Church ; he had a vast influence in conse¬ 
quence of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his char¬ 
ities, his professorship, his family connections, and his easy relations 
with the University authorities. He was to the movement all that 
Mr. Rose might have been, with that indispensable addition which 
was wanting to Mr. Rose, the intimate friendship and the familiar 
daily society of the persons who had commenced it. And he had 
that special claim on their attachment which lies in the living pres¬ 
ence of a faithful and loyal affectionateness. There was henceforth 


* Dr. Liddon, in his forthcoming Life, will probably throw light on 
this comparatively obscure period of Dr. Pusey’s life from 1828 to 1835. 



OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 73 

a man who could be the head and centre of the zealous people in 
every part of the country who were adopting the new opinions; 
and not only so, but there was one who furnished the movement 
with a front to the world, and gained for it a recognition from 
other parties in the University. Dr. Pusey was, to use the common 
expression, a host in himself; he was able to give a name, a force, 
and a personality to what was without him a soft of mob.” It is in 
the light of such words that we can understand how the Tractarian 
movement came to be characterized as Puseyism—an epithet at first 
felt to be a vulgarism,* but which soon acquired such notoriety as 
to supersede for a time all other names. 

As the movement advanced it gathered not only strength but a 
clearer logical basis. Newman had to clear more and more to his 
own mind the principles on which he was acting. What the prin¬ 
ciples of the movement were at the outset he has plainly expressed 
under three heads. First, the assertion of the principle of Dogma 
—“My battle,” he says, “was with Liberalism; by Liberalism I 
meant the anti-dogmatic principle and its developments;” secondly, 
the assertion of a Visible Church with sacraments and rites and def¬ 
inite religious teaching, on the foundation of dogma; and thirdly, 
the assertion that the Anglican Church was the Church as opposed 
to the Church of Rome. The dogmatic principle lay at the root of 
the movement. All else followed from this; and this principle 
Newman brought with him from the Evangelicals among whom he 
had been trained. “From the age of fifteen,” he says, “dogmahad 
been the fundamental principle of my religion. I know no other 
religion—I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion.” 
Here was the exactly opposite note to the “Noetic” school of Whate- 
ly and Arnold and Hampden, whose great aim in all their theolog¬ 
ical writings had been more or less to discriminate between dogma 
and religion—to show that dogma is a later growth from religion, 
and not religion itself. Not at all that the Noetic school looked 
upon religion “as a mere sentiment;” but it was its work more or 
less to show that the primitive ideas of Christianity as presented in 
the New Testament are distinct from later dogmatic developments; 
that Paulinism, in short, is not Athanasianism, nor even the theol¬ 
ogy of St. John quite the theology of the Nicene creed. All this was 
at variance with the dogmatic principle. It struck it at the base; 
and with Newman’s convictions it struck Christianity at the base. 
He afterwards, indeed, expounded the principle of development in 


* Dr. Mozley’s “ Letters,’’ p. 129, where we have a curious illustration 
of the manner in which this name came to be used instead of Tractari- 
anism. 



74 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


liis own way; hut the true historical conception of it has always 
been unintelligible to him. And no less the idea of the Church as 
a Spiritual community of diverse forms of expression and govern¬ 
ment—of varying nationality. This idea was, if possible, still more 
repellent to him. Nothing was conceivable or of Divine right but 
a Visible Church with definite rites and prerogatives — his own 
Church, of course, being this Church. Romanism, therefore, at the 
outset necessarily incurred his hostility. Anglicanism was the only 
Divine system. “My own Bishop was my Pope,” as he says. 

This was his logical position. He and Keble and Pusey set them¬ 
selves to vindicate it. Theological argument remained in the main 
in his own hands. It was the stress of his logic, we shall see—pierc¬ 
ing sophism after sophism — that at length drove him out of the 
movement, and finally to Rome. Keble and Pusey were much less 
polemical, less at the mercy of a spirit of argumentative restlessness. 
They busied tnemselves with the historical aspects of the question. 
They engaged by translations and otherwise to prove that Angli¬ 
canism was identical with Patristic Christianity. While Newman 
labored in an elaborate work* to show that Catholicism, as em¬ 
bodied in the Church of England, was the only Divine System in 
relation to Romanism on the one hand, and Popular Protestantism 
on the other hand, Dr. Pusey began the well-known Library of the 
Fathers, which remains the most elaborate literary monument of 
the movement. It is curious, in looking back upon these patristic 
labors, especially in view of Dr. Pusey’s large-minded dealing with 
the phenomena of German theology, to notice how entirely uncrit¬ 
ical they are. The Fathers were taken without question. Neither 
chronological order nor historical method regulated their selection. 

A heap of documents of varying authority, or of no authority, were 
cast before the reader The Ignatian Epistles passed unchallenged, . 
and in one way and another play a significant part in the contro¬ 
versy. If a writing contained the assertion of what was called 
Church principles, this was ample guarantee of its excellence and 
genuineness. The very thing that was suspicious became the index 
of authority—so dead was the historic spirit in the members of the 
school. No movement ever started with a larger petitio pi'incipii, 
and the premiss only swelled as it advanced. There was endless 
building up out of old stones. This was confessedly Newman’s 
idea of what the Church needed.f But what the stones themselves 
were really worth was never asked. The translation of Fleury’s 


* “ The Prophetical Office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism 
and Popular Protestantism.” 
t “Apologia,” pp. 144-5. 




OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 75 

Church History and the series of the Lives of English Saints all 
came from the same pure appetite for tradition. Whatever had the 
note of antiquity was to be brought to the light, and the lineaments 
of the Ancient Church were sought among the debris of mediaeval 
and patristic times rather than in the living pages of the New Testa¬ 
ment. The Patristic Church, or anything of its true lineaments, came 
as a refreshing picture to many minds accustomed to the disguises of 
popular Protestantism; but the picture certainly no more correspond¬ 
ed to the original reality than any ultra-Protestant representation. 

The Hampden episode already described proved the fighting 
power of the party, and as the years passed on they became more 
emboldened and aggressive. Newman grew vastly in personal in¬ 
fluence. His afternoon sermons at St. Mary’s became a spiritual 
power. They deserved to be so. Here he is at his best, away from 
the field of history and of controversy, searching the heart with the 
light of his spiritual genius, or melting it to tenderness with the 
music of his exquisite language. All his strength and little of his 
weakness, his insight, his subtlety, his pathos, his love of souls, his 
marvellous play of dramatic as well as spiritual faculty, his fervor 
without excitement, his audacity without offence or sophistical ag¬ 
gression, appear in his sermons. He was a preacher as other men 
are poets or orators. In these years, 1838-39, his position was at 
its height, and the movement was reaching its climax. As the de¬ 
cade closed the Anglo-Catholic party had become a power in the 
Church, and “ an object of alarm to her rulers and friends.” 

The first check came in the moment of its power, when the Bishop 
of Oxford in 1838 animadverted upon the Tracts. Newman pro¬ 
fessed his willingness to stop them, and even to withdraw such as 
his Lordship objected to. His Lordship did not insist on this step, 
and the tracts went on. But the pressure both of logic and of cir¬ 
cumstances soon developed grave results. Newman’s own line of 
thought rapidly ran out in the only way in which it could run. 
From Antiquity as the note of the Church and the via media , he 
passed to Catholicity as a surer note. Then trains of thought based 
on his patristic studies came to shatter the idea of Catholicity as 
applied to the Church of England. He was driven forward from 
one point to another. He stood on the via media as long as he could. 
The Church of England was a true branch of the Catholic Church, 
he argued. It is ancient and apostolical. It has the true order of 
succession. Rome has yielded to modern errors. But about 1839 
he began to have doubts as to the Anglican order of succession. 
The “Catholicity” of Rome began to overshadow in his mind the 
“ Apostolicity ” of Anglicanism. The Church was One, quod sem¬ 
per quod ubique quod ab omnibus. The Roman argument became 


76 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


more powerful, the Anglican more doubtful. The great Donatist 
controversy deepened the shadow on his mind. The Roman com¬ 
munion as a matter of fact represented “the main body of the 
Church Catholic.” Were not the Donatists by their schism cut off 
ipso facto from the heritage of Christ? How should it fare better 
with the Church of England? It might have antiquity in its favor; 
but was not the true apostolic descent in the main body? The pres¬ 
sure of this argument was irresistible, if the true and only church be 
an external institution with certain recognizable notes or features. 
Apostolical succession is an outward and traceable fact, or it is noth¬ 
ing at all. It cannot belong to two churches. If sacramental grace 
be the exclusive property of an external order, this order must be 
visible, and it must also be exclusive. It must be in the Roman 
communion, or the Anglican communion, or the Presbyterian com¬ 
munion, it cannot be in all three. To Newman it had existed beyond 
doubt in the Church of England, because this church was, as he and 
his friends supposed, “ Catholic” in England in the sense of displac¬ 
ing all others. Romanism had no logical footing where Catholicism 
already existed. So long as one can hold to this ground the position 
is good. But then of course the converse is equally logical, that 
where Catholicism in the Roman or Oriental form exists, Anglican¬ 
ism has no footing. The Roman or Oriental form may be corrupt¬ 
ed, but no High Churchman can doubt that they represent the true 
Church, however corrupted, wherever they prevail. 

Various consequences follow inevitably from this doctrine. If 
Anglicanism represent the Catholic Church in England, it must 
speak with a Catholic voice. If the Church of England be in Eng¬ 
land that One Church of which in old times Athanasius and Augus¬ 
tine were members—as the Church of Rome is in France or Spain— 
then the doctrine must be the same. The Anglican formularies can¬ 
not be at variance with the authoritative teaching of the old Church. 
And then again, wherever the Christian Church exists in the direct or 
original line of descent, Anglicanism and still less Protestantism can 
have no right of interference. 

Dr. Newman’s via media was destined to break against both these 
rocks. The 39 Articles were the monument of Church of England 
Protestantism. They must be minimized; their meaning sophisti¬ 
cated ; their language explained. In other words, they must be 
brought into accord with mediaeval doctrine, against which in many 
points they were a protest. Hence Tract 90, which at length brought 
the series to an end in the explosion which it caused. It was his own 
bishop* who said that in this Tract the author had made the Articles 


* Dr. Bagot, of whom Dr. Newman speaks highly in the “Apologia.” 





OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 


11 


mean anything or nothing. The words cut him to the quick. Nor 
can an impartial judgment say that they were too strong. Both 
Keble and Pusey, as well as the author himself, have indeed written 
in defence of the mode of argument employed in Tract 90.* * The 
sum of this defence may be said to be that Newman sought to give 
the “literal grammatical sense ”of the Articles, apart from later 
meanings attributed to them; and that this principle of interpreta¬ 
tion had already been recognized on behalf of the liberal Theolo¬ 
gians, and in the common saying that the Articles “admitted both 
Arminians and Calvinists.” This is ingenious, but nothing more. 
Because Articles admit of a certain latitude of interpretation which 
all historical statements of doctrine must do, it by no means follows 
that any given interpretation of them is warrantable, still less that 
doctrines against which they appear to every unsophisticated mind 
to have been directed are not really condemned in them, but some¬ 
thing quite different, having an obscure relation to the doctrines in 
question. To read the Articles themselves, and then to turn to Dr. 
Newman’s explanations, is a painful process for most minds, even 
minds accustomed to theological subtleties. And this of itself may 
be held to settle the question. 

Four tutors, including the late Archbishop of Canterbury, pub¬ 
lished a protest against the Tract, and a formal censure was passed 
upon it by the heads of Houses a few days later. The Tract was 
finally withdrawn at the request of the Bishop of Oxford. Then 
immediately following, and while all the pain that arose from these 
proceedings was still sharp in his heart, came the establishment of 
the Jerusalem Bishopric. As the Catholic continuity of the Church 
had snapped in his hands on the side of doctrine, so it had broken 
as well on the historical side. The Jerusalem Bishopric was not 
only an invasion of Catholicity, but an invasion which carried with 
it (as he believed) the express sanction of Lutheran and Calvinist 
heresy. His famous protest against it bears that ‘ ‘ Lutheranism and 
Calvinism are heresies repugnant to Scripture and anathematized 
by east as well as west.” It is very instructive that the Jerusalem 
Bishopric—which has proved practically of no consequence in the 
Christian world—should have divided enthusiastically the two forces 


“A man,” he says, “whom, had I had a choice, I should have pre¬ 
ferred ” (as his ecclesiastical superior) “ to any other bishop on the bench, 
and for whose memory I have a special affection.”—P. 123. 

* A new edition of Tract 90 was issued, with “ a historical preface ” by 
Dr. Pusey, in 1861. Keble’s defence is embodied in a letter to Mr. Justice 
Coleridge, privately printed in 1841, and afterwards published along with 
the new edition of the Tract. 





78 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


of Liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism now running with such force 
against each other. To Bunsen and his friends the bishopric was 
a pet project, designed as a symbol of Christian union in the broad¬ 
est sense; to Newman and his friends it was as the “abomination 
of desolation,” tending to the “disorganization of the Church of 
England, and the denial of its claim to be considered a branch of the 
Catholic Church.” It is hardly possible to say whether the hopes 
of the one or the fears of the other have been more completely falsi¬ 
fied by the event. 

It was now evident to Newman’s own mind that his place of lead¬ 
ership in the Oxford movement was gone. From this date—-the 
spring of 1841—he says he was “on his death-bed ” as regards the 
Church of England. He formally gave up his place in the move¬ 
ment and retired to Littlemore. As yet, however, he did not con¬ 
template leaving the Church of England. Littlemore was his 
“Torres Vedras,” from which again he thought he might advance 
within the Anglican Church. There were still points as in reference 
to the “.honors paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints,” on which 
he differed from the Church of Rome. It is unnecessary for us, 
however, to follow the “history of his religious opinions” further. 
Everybody may read their further course in his own interesting 
narrative. It need only be added that in the autumn of 1843 he re¬ 
signed the parochial charge of St. Mary, at Oxford; that by the end 
of 1845 he had become a Roman Catholic, and that in the beginning 
of 1846 he left Oxford and passed formally within the pale of the 
Roman Church. 

The retirement of Newman from the scene of action virtually 
closes the movement, so far as it can be embraced within this course 
of lectures. Much, however, remains to be described in a full his¬ 
tory of the Modern Anglo-Catholicism; the agitation at Oxford in 
1844 and 1845 in connection with Mr. Ward’s bookj “ The True Ideal 
of a Christian Church;” the secession of Mr. Ward, Mr. Oakley, and 
others to the Church of Rome; Dr. Pusey’s suspension, and then his 
continued labors in connection with the movement; the rise of a 
younger Anglo-Catholic party, represented by such men as Samuel 
Wilberforce, Mr. Gladstone, James B. Mozley, Mr., now Dean 
Church, and others. Mr. Gladstone’s once well-known volume on 
“ The State in its Relations with the Church ” appeared in 1838, and 
his book on “Church Principles” in 1840. These publications, 
more distinctly perhaps than any others, mark the rise of the 
younger Anglican school to which Keble warmly attached himself, 
and of which Pusey, after a time of irresolution, became again the 
animating head. It is only justice to this school to say that it has 
been from the first and continues to be genuinely Anglican. Wheth- 


OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 


79 


er its avowed principles may or may not imply the conclusions to 
which Newman felt himself irresistibly driven, is a polemical ques¬ 
tion with which we have no need to meddle here. The fact is that the 
school of doctrine, of which both Samuel Wilberforce and Mr. Glad¬ 
stone have been conspicuous ornaments, and of which the late Dr. 
Mozley (younger brother of the author of the “Reminiscences”) was 
the chief theologian, is a definite product of Anglican Christianity. 
It is native to the Church of England; and all its writers and think¬ 
ers have a stamp which it may be doubted whether John Henry 
Newman ever had. His Anglo-Catholicism was after all only a 
state of transition from Evangelicalism, or something like Liberal¬ 
ism, to Romanism.* In 1826 he was drifting in the direction of 


* There is an interesting paper by Dr. Mozley in the Christian Remem¬ 
brancer, January, 1846, on Dr. Newman’s secession, in which a line of 
thought as to Dr. Newman’s relations to Anglo-Catholicisrn or the via 
media is suggested not unlike that in the text. Founding on a remark¬ 
able passage in the Introduction to Newman’s lectures on “Romanism 
and Popular Protestantism” to the following effect: “Protestantism 
and Popery are real religions; they have furnished the mould in which 
nations have been cast; but the via media has never existed except on 
paper; it has never been reduced to practice;” Dr. Mozley observes that 
with all Newman’s great power as a preacher and writer within the Church 
of England, it seems to be doubtful whether he ever realized himself as 
identified with its life and work. “He did not energize as a parish 
priest, but as an author. His sermons were addressed to a University 
audience. He had weekly communion and daily prayers, and he had the 
church at Littlemore with its daily duties. But all this was a thing at¬ 
tached to his great position as a religious mover, and not that position 
to it. He had one line, that of a spreader of opinions; and this line, 
however appropriate a one, was still one which kept the Church distant, 
as it were, to his mind, and did not bring her near him.” All this is 
something like saying in another way that Dr. Newman had never 
breathed the true air of Anglo-Catholicism, or felt himself quite at home 
in it. It was always to him, in some degree, a mere “book religion” 
into which he had argued himself, and out of which he again argued him¬ 
self. No one could know Dr. Newman—not even Hurrell Froude—bet¬ 
ter than Dr. Mozley, who was not only his pupil, but lived on terms of 
the closest intimacy with him from 1833 onward till he left Oxford. 

Mozley himself would make an interesting study, if we were able to 
treat of the secondary phenomena of the Oxford movement. He is a 
very different man from his brother—the author of the “ Reminiscences ” 
—and as a theologian is really great, although somewhat hard and polem¬ 
ical, not only in his “ Bampton Lectures,” but in his earlier volume on 
“ Predestination and Original Sin.” He had a good deal of the same liter¬ 
ary power as his brother—the same facility and copiousness of pen ; but 
in his earlier essays also not a little of the same literary persiflage and 





80 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


liberalism;* in 1836—certainly in 1839—he was drifting in the direc¬ 
tion of Rome. He had never imbibed, as Keble and the Mozleys 
and others had done, the pure air of Anglicanism as a distinct relig¬ 
ious life. To those who understand this, and how much more vital 
in religion as in other things affinity of feeling is than similarity of 
logical principle, it can be no wonder that Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble 
remained firm in their adherence to the Church of England while 
Newman left it. The latter saysf of Dr. Pusey, that all the time he 
knew him he was never “in his reason and judgment” near to 
Rome. On the contrary, in Newman himself there was something 
from the first in his whole mode of thought and love of personal 
rather than rational supremacy, which had a tinge of popery ,% and 
which carried him irresistibly forward, although by slow degrees, to 
his appointed end. 

The Oxford movement remains a great, if not the very greatest, 
fact in the recent history of Anglican Christianity. Its principles 
in their polemical aspect suggest man}' further thoughts as to how 
far they are capable of rational vindication, and how far they shade j 
off into Romanism. We could find no better text-book for such a 
discussion than Mr. Gladstone’s “Church Principles,” which treats , 
in succession the great Anglo-Catholic doctrines, all, according to 
him, more or less involved in the idea of the Church as “ one, holy, 
catholic, and apostolic.” In this and his earlier volume is un¬ 
doubtedly preserved much of the pith of Mr. Gladstone’s thought. 

I doubt if any one can understand the deeper impulses of a mind 
which has been and continues to be such a potent factor in our 
modern political life, who has not studied its workings and favorite 
modes of conception as embodied in these books. But our lectures 
here are designed not for discussion but for description; and the 
general character of the movement is already apparent in all that 
we have said. The great idea of the Church in its visibility and j 


intellectual insolence. His paper on Arnold , one of his earliest (1844), is I 
a striking specimen of what I mean. He speaks of the great teacher at ! 
Rugby as “a man who, without a vestige of internal scruple or misgiv- 1 
ing, unchristianized the whole development of the Christian Church from ' 
the days of the Apostles, who made the very friends and successors of ji 
the Apostles teachers of corruption.” . . . Again, he says, “ We had much 
rather not think him as a religionist at all.” J. B. Mozley was a very ' 
young theological lion when he roared in this way, but the whole article 
is a bad specimen of a bad school, and of that strange and even coarse 
arrogance which is sometimes near to the best gifts. 

* “Apologia,” p. 72. t “Apologia,” p. 138. 

X See a remarkable passage in his brother’s “Phases of Faith,” refer¬ 
ring to as early a period as 1823-6, p. 7. Ninth Edition. 





OXFORD OR ANGLO-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 


81 


authority—in its notes of succession, dogma, and sacrament—sums 
up its meaning. Many will dispute the very possibility of any such 
Church or embodiment of spiritual power; but there are few who 
will not acknowledge that the Oxford movement has done more 
than all other movements in our time to revive “the grandeur and 
force of historical communion and Church life,” and no less “the 
true place of beauty and art in worship.” It is much to have 
brought home to the hearts of Christian people the reality of a great 
spiritual society extending through all Christian ages, living by its 
own truth and life, having its own laws and rights and usages. In 
a time when the “dissidence of dissent” and the canker of sectari¬ 
anism have spread to the very heart of our national existence, with 
so many unhappy results, the idea of the Church as a great Unity— 
and no less the idea of Christian art—of the necessity of order and 
beauty in Christian worship—are ideas to he thankful for. That 
both these ideas are capable, as history proves, of rapid abuse, un¬ 
less interpenetrated by the light of reason, and used with purity of 
heart, is no ground for rejecting either. It is the very function of 
Christian sense to hold the balance of truth, and by “proving all 
things,” to “ hold fast that which is good.” 

6 


82 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


IV. 

MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 

We have seen how varied and full of interest was the movement 
of religious thought in England during the third decade of this cen¬ 
tury. What was Scotland doing at this time ? She had not only 
joined in the intellectual revival of the century—but she had con¬ 
tributed some of its most powerful agents. In 1802 the first num¬ 
ber of the Edinburgh Review was published; in 1805 Scott began his 
career as a poet. Of all the names that adorn the opening of our 
century Scott’s must be pronounced upon the whole the greatest— 
at once the manliest and the most original and creative. He may 
rank below Wordsworth and Coleridge as a poet, although he is 
great in poetic qualities as old as Homer, in which both are entirely 
■wanting; but take him all in all there is no intellectual figure com¬ 
parable to him in breadth and richness. He strikes the new note 
of the century—its larger intelligence both for nature and life—its 
deeper insight into the past, as well as its freer, fuller, and clearer 
eye for the present, with a wider, a more extended and powerful 
sweep than any other. 

Scotland was then well advanced in the intellectual race which 
opened the century. Is there any corresponding movement of re¬ 
ligious thought such as followed the intellectual revival in Eng¬ 
land, and charged it with a deeper life ? It is often assumed that, 
keen as the intellectual activity of Scotland is, this activity has not 
extended itself to theology. The Calvinistic creed of the country is 
supposed to have remained unshaken under all its mental progress. 
There is a certain measure of truth in this; and yet it is really a 
superficial judgment. It is true that Calvinism remains the com¬ 
mon creed of the country, and that the Scottish Churches have not 
been disturbed in the same degree as the Church of England by 
divers novelties of doctrine. But it is far from true that Scotland 
has been quiescent in religious thought. It has not moved with the 
same bulk or mass of movement; in the nature of things this was 
impossible; but it has contributed new and powerful influences to 
the onward current of religious opinion often reaching Englana— 
and originating there new impulses, or adding momentum to those 
already ip operation. 


MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 83 

In the very same decade which gave to England the religious 
philosophy of Coleridge and the early Oriel School, Scotland is seen 
full of religious as well as intellectual activity. Carlyle was elab¬ 
orating his new Gospel of Work ; George Combe was propounding 
a new philosophy of life; and Thomas Erskine, Macleod Campbell, 
and Edward Irving, were all supposed to be assailing the old the¬ 
ology of the country. There was vehement agitation, both philo¬ 
sophical and religious. Quick as was the pace of thought in Eng¬ 
land between the years 1820 and 1830, it was hardly less so in Scot¬ 
land. Thomas Erskine began his career as a religious writer in 
1820; and the more his writings are studied the more remarkable 
will be found to have been their influence. The present lecture will 
be devoted in the main to trace this influence and what is known as 
the “Row heresy.” Thomas Carlyle and his creed will afterwards 
claim attention in a separate lecture. To George Combe and his 
philosophy we can only give a paragraph as we pass onward. 

There has always from the days of Hume survived in Scotland 
a vein of naturalistic speculation. Men like Sir John Leslie and 
Thomas Brown, both Professors in Edinburgh, may be pointed to 
as representing this turn of mind in the earlier part of the century. 
It was the enemy, of course, of the prevailing theology; and the 
Church had signalized its opposition to it on the appointment of 
Leslie to the Chair of Mathematics in 1805. The Edinburgh Re¬ 
viewers, a certain class of Intellectualists in the capital, were more 
or less identified with the naturalistic spirit. There was always, in 
short, a fitting soil in Edinburgh, if nowhere else, for the culture of 
what we now call Naturalism, or a theory of life and duty resting 
on Nature, rather than on Revelation; and George Combe became 
the apostle of such a theory in the years 1825 and 1828. In the 
former year appeared his “System of Phrenology,”*and at the lat¬ 
er date his well-known volume on “The Constitution of Man.” The 
Scotsman newspaper, then in the first phase of its intellectual activi¬ 
ty, and William'and Robert Chambers, both exercising even then 
a well-established influence on the popular literature of the day, 
were somewhat in the same line of thought. There was no combi¬ 
nation or definite party, but many shared in a movement in which 
George Combe in every way deserves the pre-eminence. He was a 
man of spotless character and the most sincere enthusiasm, combin¬ 
ing an earnest Christian theism with the most unhesitating belief in 
views of man’s constitution and responsibility which seem constant¬ 
ly shading off into Materialism. Many of his special dogmas have 
vanished with the progress of knowledge, especially of that natural 


* Originally published in 1819 as “ Essays on Phrenology.” 




84 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


knowledge on which his system was based; but there are also im¬ 
portant aspects of his teaching, in its bearing on education, which 
survive, and have entered with enlightening force into our modern 
educational theories. Not only so. But imperfect as we must 
judge, both from a philosophical and religious point of view, many 
of Combe’s generalizations,'in which he reposed implicit confidence, 
we feel that there was a healthy element in his speculations. They 
were as.a salt in the intellectual and religious atmosphere, and at a 
time when there was much to harden and sometimes darken relig¬ 
ious feeling, they helped to nourish a broader and freer opinion not 
without its beneficent bearing on religion. 

It is, however, in other directions that we must look for the chief 
influences which at this time affected religious opinion in Scotland. 
Never, perhaps hardly even in our own time, when the note of un¬ 
settlement in belief is so commqn, has there been more excitement 
and novelty in Scottish religion than in those years. The pages of 
the Christian Instructor, then the organ of Evangelicalism in Scot¬ 
land, bear everywhere testimony to this state of things. The age is 
spoken of as one of “ modern heresies,” and a single volume of that 
once well-known organ in 1830 recounts no fewer than three allied 
heretical movements. 

It is strange that a quiet country gentleman, Mr. Thomas Erskine 
of Linlathen, should have been the prominent figure in these move¬ 
ments, and that his books, now hardly remembered, should have 
been so widely circulated and caused so much alarm. They were 
not merely assailed in the Christian Instructor, but Dr. Andrew 
Thomson devoted a volume of sermons in 1830 to their refutation. 
A tract or part of a tract in the Oxford series was occupied with an 
elaborate analysis of one of them as illustrative of the rationalistic 
spirit of the time. On the other hand, Mr. Maurice is found con¬ 
stantly expressing his indebtedness to Mr. Erskine’s books. Of one 
of the least known he says, “It has been unspeakably comfortable 
to me ” * and generally he testifies again and again that they have 
helped him much in finding an answer to the question, ‘ ‘ What a 
Gospel to mankind must be.” 

Of Thomas Erskine we might say much as' a man. It was our 
privilege to enjoy his intimate friendship during the closing years 
of his life, when he was a veteran in the field of spiritual experience 
and theological thought, while we were only looking over the field 
with raw and inexperienced eyes. As the life-long friend of Mau¬ 
rice and of Carlyle—spirits so apart—he was naturally regarded by 
younger men, who knew anything of his beautiful, Christian nat¬ 
ure, with affectionate feelings of respect. 


“Life,” vol. I., p. 121. 



MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 85 

It was impossible to know liim, and still more to come near him 
in religious intercourse, without feeling one’s self in a spiritual pres¬ 
ence of rare delicacy and power. Religious conversation of the or¬ 
dinary sort is proverbially difficult. It is but too seldom a savor of 
life unto life, being apt to hide as much as express the heart. But 
with Mr. Erskine it was a natural effluence. It came from him as 
the expression of the abiding atmosphere in which he dwelt, and 
if one may have shrunk even with him sometimes from the awe of 
the topics on which he dwelt, yet his deeply meditative words were 
seldom without light. They lifted the Soul towards Divine mystery, 
even when they failed to give meaning to it. One felt the deep sin¬ 
cerity of the man, and that he himself had laid hold of the Divine 
in his own heart whether he understood it rightly or not. Like his 
friend Maurice he was an intense Realist in religion. Abstract the¬ 
ological questions had little interest for him; religious controversy 
no interest whatever. Polemics of every kind he disliked; and he 
was often playful over their folly. I remember once of his saying 
of an old acquaintance, whose polemical faculty much outran his 
powers of insight and reason, “He is a great reasoner; but I do not 
find any light in him at all. The thing itself he does not see, but he 
can give many powerful arguments for it. The Schoolmen were 
men of this stamp—endless writing and argument, but no light.” 

His own nature, as may be supposed, was meditative, introspec¬ 
tive, quietly brooding. He reached the truth, or what he believed 
to be the truth, not so much by enlarging his knowledge, or by ex¬ 
ercising any critical and argumentative powers, as by patient thought¬ 
fulness and generalization from his own experience. It was an un¬ 
happy conjunction that pitted him against Dr. Andrew Thomson, 
or rather Dr. Andrew Thomson against him. They were utterly 
incapable of understanding each other—Thomson being forensic, 
argumentative, systematic, rhetorical in the highest degree, and Ers¬ 
kine the very opposite of all this, yet with depths of spiritual feel¬ 
ing and glimpses of insight of which Thomson knew nothing. And 
so the well-aimed shafts of the latter flew over his opponent’s head ; 
they failed of their mark altogether. It was of no use exposing 
obscurities or inconsistencies in a writer who did not aim to be 
systematic or to argue out a thesis so much as to tell merely what 
he himself felt as to the Gospel, the difficulties of its acceptance by 
many minds, and the higher form in which it presented itself to his 
own spiritual experience. Dr. Thomson’s polemics, it must be con¬ 
fessed, were not of a high order; occasionally they show a bad spir¬ 
it. He had noble gifts, we know; there was a fine Christian manli¬ 
ness in his character; but there was also a certain coarseness of 
fibre, and he does not shine in encounter with Mr. Erskine. It is not 


86 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


to be denied that the latter, with the school to which he belonged, 
was highly provocative. Never retaliating, they yet looked with 
ineffable pity on their assailants and the countless arguments they 
directed against them. And there is nothing perhaps harder to bear 
than the pity which entrenches itself in silence, and looks down as 
from a serener height on the wordy warfare. It must be said also 
that while Erskine never personally attacked the dogmas of the 
Church, he yet, in all his writings, tended quietly to subvert them. 
He spoke with disapproval of the prevalent religion taught from 
the pulpits and received by the people. This was a trying tone for 
men like Dr. Andrew Thomson, proud of the popular religion, and 
who, long since done with their theological education, had no idea 
of beginning it again in Mr. Erskine’s school. 

As for himself, Thomas Erskine was never all his life done with 
his spiritual education. He was always learning, and, his opponents 
said, “never coming to the knowledge of the truth.” He had no 
belief in finality of any kind. He was always seeking for more 
light. If the truth had been offered him with the one hand, and 
the pursuit of it with the other, he would have chosen, with Lessing, 
the chase rather than the game. “ If we only could have an infalli¬ 
ble Church—an unerring guide!” it was once said in his hearing. 
The remark raised all such combative energy as he had. “ Oh no!” 
he said, “such a thing, if it could be, would destroy all God’s real 
purpose with man, which is to educate him, and to make him feel 
that he is being educated—to awaken perception in the man him¬ 
self—a growing perception of what is true and right, which is of 
the very essence of all spiritual discipline. Any infallible authori¬ 
ty would destroy this, hud so take away the meaning of a church 
altogether.” 

These few traits may serve to give some image of Mr. Erskine. 
They are but feeble strokes of little value to any who knew him ; 
but they are characteristic. He lived so far into our own time, and 
was so well known to some of our generation, that we are apt to 
forget how far back his activity as a writer and his religious influ¬ 
ence commenced. He passed for the Scottish Bar in 1810, and in 
his early years, as indeed through life, was the familiar friend of 
Jeffrey, Cockburn, and Rutherfurd. With Leslie, the well-known 
mathematician, he also lived in intimacy, and had a great liking for 
him and many stories of his eccentricities. His life-long friendship 
with Thomas Carlyle is known to all; and while many characters 
have been scorched beneath that dreadful pen, from which epithets 
fell like cannon-shot, leaving an ineffaceable impression, there is no 
word but what is gentle and kind of his friend at Linlathen. Car¬ 
lyle, indeed, might well love him, for he had a warm place always 


MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 87 

in' Thomas Erskine’s heart, who mourned for his unhappiness as if 
he had been a brother. 

Erskine’s first book appeared in 1820, and in the following year 
had reached a third edition. It was entitled “Remarks on the In¬ 
ternal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion.” This work 
is not only interesting in itself, but especially interesting as mark¬ 
ing a crisis in his own history, and what we may call a crisis in the 
theological thought of Scotland. The author had shared in the 
prevalent scepticism which marked the period of his youth and the 
Edinburgh society in which he had mingled. “ The patient study 
of the Gospel narrative,” he says, “and ot its place in the history of 
the world, and the perception of a light in it which entirely satisfied 
his reason and conscience ,” overcame his doubts and left him in the 
assured possession of divine truth. The death of his brother, whom 
he succeeded in the property of Linlathen, deepened his religious 
impressions. The current of his faith swelled strongly under God’s 
dealing with him, and he was so moved that he committed his 
thoughts to paper with a view “of putting them into the hands of 
his companions at the Bar when he parted from them.” He does 
not seem to have carried out this intention, but the paper he then 
composed was afterwards used with his sanction, as an “Introduc¬ 
tory Essay,” to Samuel Rutherfurd’s Letters.* 

Mr. Erskine’s first volume is in some respects his most character¬ 
istic. It is mainly the result of his own thought—as all his books 
were—but it may also in some degree have been suggested by a 
controversy of the day. Dr. Chalmers had published, ten years be¬ 
fore, his well-known paper on Christianity in the ‘ ‘ Edinburgh En¬ 
cyclopaedia.” In this paper he had, with the first fervor of his 
new-born faith, denounced the total insufficiency^of natural religion 
to judge the contents of revelation or the character and conduct of 
God as given in revelation. Reason might judge, he argued, of the 
validity of the external evidences of Christianity, but “its intrinsic 
merits ” or internal evidences were quite beyond the competency of 
our natural judgment. If the authority of the Christian revelation 
is once established on the ground of its historical evidence, it is not 
our business to scrutinize its reasonableness, but “to submit our 
minds to the fair interpretation of Scripture.” This was the natu¬ 
ral but rash conclusion of an intense and absorbing faith. It was 
a rash conclusion certainly — afterwards abandoned by Chalmers, 
himself—for how can the divine authorship of anything be known 
apart from its character ? The weakness of Dr. Chalmers’s position 
was well exposed in an acute and able volume by Dr. Mearns of 


* Collins, Glasgow, 1825. 




88 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Aberdeen, in which it was shown how impossible it is to judge of 
the divine origin of Christianity apart from a consideration of its 
real nature, both as revealing the character of God and as bearing 
on the character of man. Religion, in other words, must prove it¬ 
self reasonable, worthy of God, and fitted to do good to man, before 
it can be accepted as divine. Dr. Mearns’s volume was published 
in 1818. 

Erskine can hardly fail to have been interested in this polemic, 
touching as it does so closely the line of his own thought. With 
him there could be no question as to the necessary connection be¬ 
tween the Divine origin of Christianity and its Divine character, 
nor of the competency of our moral instincts to judge this charac¬ 
ter. No man could be less of a rationalist in the obnoxious sense 
of the word. He was steeped to the heart in the essential flavor of 
Christian truth. But all divine truth must find its echo within him¬ 
self—must have a definite relation to his own spiritual experience, 
and, as he believed, to all Christian experience. In this consisted 
its reasonableness. A religion of mere authority, coming to man 
from the outside and compelling faith and obedience, was unintel¬ 
ligible to him. It was not even of the nature of religion, which 
must be always self - evidencing, showing itself by its own light; 
proving itself what it professes to be by the essential relation be¬ 
tween its doctrines and the spiritual elevation, the moral culture of 
those who receive it. * ‘ The reasonableness of a religion, ” he says, 
“ seems to me to consist in there being a direct and natural connec¬ 
tion between a believing of the doctrines which it inculcates, and a 
being formed by these to the character which it recommends. If 
the belief of the doctrines has no tendency to train a disciple in a 
more exact and more willing discharge of its moral obligations, 
there is evidently a very strong probability against the truth of that 
religion. . . . What is the history of another world to me, unless it 
have some intelligible relation to my duties or happiness?”* 

All this is simply to assert that religion, to be accepted as true, 
must be real. Its doctrines must be of such a nature that we can¬ 
not believe them without being the better of believing them. They 
are self-evidencing in the light of conscience. They are self-trans¬ 
forming in the very act of reception. This seems almost a truism, 
and yet this very passage was one which was specially quoted to 
indicate the rationalistic character of Erskine’s teaching, f It was 
pronounced presumptuous thus to judge of Divine Revelation.. 
Erskine’s great principle that the object of Christianity was “to 
bring the character of man into harmony with that of God,” was 


* P. 58. 


t No. 73 of the Oxford Tracts. 





MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 89 


supposed to minimize Revelation, to make man its arbiter — as if 
we could judge of God’s works which “look many ways,” and 
have “objects innumerable.” But surely if we are to have any 
thoughts about God and religion at all, such thoughts are the most 
worthy and reverent we can have. There is no true reverence in 
bowing before a mere authority, and taking for truth that which 
has neither light in itself, nor seems fitted to give us light, or to 
make us like to God. 

Erskine, no doubt in his first book, as in all his books, and in the 
uniform strain of his thought, was inclined to dwell somewhat ex¬ 
clusively on the internal aspect of Religion. Religion was so great 
a reality to him that he never dissociated it from its bearing on hu¬ 
man character. He could barely imagine it in mere conventional 
or historical forms—as a formal revelation, or an external institu¬ 
tion. By his own pure thinking—out of the workings of his own 
heart—he seemed to himself to have got beyond such critical ques¬ 
tions as the veracity of the evangelical narratives and other histori¬ 
cal difficulties, which in his earlier life had perplexed him. He had 
cut his way out of these difficulties, rather than solved them by pa¬ 
tient and adequate inquiry. He had said to himself as many others 
have done, I cannot reach any clear settlement of such questions; 
they are far too intricate and involve too many probabilities to be 
determined by me—perhaps to be determined by any one. He had 
none of the logical confidence of the old school of Paley, to whom 
the external evidences of Christianity presented themselves as a 
problem to be solved in a series of propositions, which they be¬ 
lieved themselves to have satisfactorily proved. Even Chalmers, 
with all the splendor of his natural powers, was in the main a man 
of an eighteenth century turn of mind, who put the apostles—as wit¬ 
nesses of the Christian miracles—into court, so to speak; and, after 
interrogation, summed up in their favor. Erskine’s intellectual 
mood was quite different. He had no argumentative or historical 
turn. His genius was purely spiritual. If he was to receive Chris¬ 
tianity at all, therefore, it must come to him as an internal light, 
flooding his soul—conditioning his whole life. He saw that men 
believed in “external evidences,” and were attached to the Church 
as an institution, without being any better men, or being inspired 
by a divine spirit. But Christianity must be all or nothing to him. 
He must see it as a divine truth. “I must discern,” he said, “in 
the history itself, a light and truth which will meet the demands 
both of my reason and conscience. In fact, however true the history 
may be, it cannot be of any moral and spiritual benefit to me until I 
apprehend its truth and meaning. This, and nothing less than this, 
is what I require, not only in this great concern, but in all others.” 


90 MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

Erskine, in short, without any indebtedness either to Schleier- 
macher or Coleridge, and almost as early as either, was in Scotland 
an apostle of the “Christian consciousness.” He led in the great 
reaction against mere formal orthodoxy, and, for that part of the 
matter, formal rationalism, which set in with the opening of the 
third decade of the century. Those who called him a rationalist 
judged him from a wrong point of view. He was rational certainly 
in comparison with all who saw in Christianity a body of mere for¬ 
mal doctrines or observances, to be accepted on authority. But he 
was the very opposite of rationalistic in the sense in which rational¬ 
ism had prevailed in Germany and England in the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury. This bastard form of reason had cut the heart out of all re¬ 
ligion and reduced it to a caput mortuum. Erskine’s religion was 
all heart. He did not understand religion without the living fire of 
faith and love and obedience animating it all through. It must be 
a light in his reason, a guide in his conscience—a life within his life 
—a spiritual power glowing in his whole conduct. This was ‘ ‘ in¬ 
ternal evidence ”—the revelation of Love to love, of Life to life—of 
God to man, raising him to divine communion, and reflecting upon 
him the divine likeness. “The first faint outline of Christianity,” 
he says, “presents to us a view of God operating on the character 
of men through a manifestation of His own character, in order that, 
by leading them to participate in some measure in His moral like¬ 
ness, they may also in some measure participate in His happiness.” 

The same subjective tendency pervades all his special views of 
Christian doctrine. As with Coleridge, for example, the abstract 
doctrine of the Trinity had little interest for him. He recognized 
it indeed as speculatively true—as the necessary outcome of real 
thought on the subject of God. I heard him in later years dis¬ 
course much on this subject, and endeavor to explain how the very 
idea of God as Love implied an object of love or divine Son from 
the beginning, and no less a divine Spirit. But so far the doctrine 
lay to him in obscurity. In was only in the light of redemption that 
it planted itself as a living truth in his Christian intelligence. ‘ ‘ The 
obscurity of the doctrine vanishes, ” he says, ‘ ‘ when it comes in 
such a form as this, ‘ God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should have eternal 
life.’” Again, while speaking of the dogma, in its article or creed 
form, as presenting difficulties to the mind—as being in fact of such 
an “unintelligible nature” as to suggest the idea “that Christianity 
holds out a premium for believing improbabilities he thinks that 
when taken in its Biblical connection—as all doctrines should be 
taken—it becomes an illuminating belief. In his own language, 
“it stands indissolubly united with an act of divine holiness and 


MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 91 

compassion which radiates to the heart an appeal of tenderness most 
intelligible in its nature and object, and most constraining in its in¬ 
fluence.” 

But Mr. Erskine’s teaching gradually assumed a more definite 
and significant form. He passed from consideration of the general 
character and evidence of religion to that of the essential character 
of the Gospel as a Revelation of Divine Love. It was his later 
rather than his earlier teaching that may be said to have formed a 
school of which Maurice was an otfshoot and of which Dr. Macleod 
Campbell became the chief theological representative in Scotland. 

This more essential Christian teaching was embodied in a series 
of volumes,* but especially in a volume on “The Unconditional 
Freeness of the Gospel, ” prepared by Mr. Erskine while on the Con¬ 
tinent in 1827, and published on his return early in 1828. In this 
volume he explained how the current theological terms, such as 
Pardon, Salvation, Eternal Life, were, as he supposed, misinterpret¬ 
ed. Pardon was conceived as offered now to every sinner on con¬ 
dition of faith, Salvation as equivalent to justification by faith, and 
Eternal Life as a life in the future, locally represented under the 
name of heaven. According to him Pardon was already made for 
every sinner in the mission and death of Christ. “The pardon of 
the Gospel,” in his own words, “ is in effect a declaration on the part 
of God to every individual sinner in the whole world that his holy 
compassion embraces him, and the blood of Jesus Christ has atoned 
for his sins.” Salvation, again, is “the healing of the spiritual dis¬ 
eases of the soul,” and Eternal Life “the communication of the life 
of God to the soul.” Heaven is not necessarily associated with the 
idea of locality, but is “properly the name for a state conformed to 
the will of God,” and hell the opposite of that state. 

It is easy to see in all this the operation of the same subjective 
tendency—his desire to translate the gospel out of the formal con¬ 
ceptions in which it had become systematized in the dpctrines of the 
Westminster Assembly, into experience and life, f These doctrines 
appeared to him to limit the Gospel and keep it aloof from man till 


* 1. “An Essay on Faith,” 1822; 2. “The Unconditional Freeness of 
the Gospel,” 1828; 3. “The Brazen Serpent,” 1831; 4. “The Doctrine 
of Election,” 1837. 

f In one of his letters, Nov., 1833, addressed to Lady Elgin, he says, in 
words exactly agreeing with those in the text, “ I believe all nolions of 
Religion [the italics are his own], however true, to be absolutely useless 
or worse than useless.” Christ “is far above all doctrines about Him, 
however true. He is the truth. A doctrine that can be separated from 
Himself is a vanity and deception.” 




92 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


applied to him by the twofold act of divine election and justifying 
faith. On the contrary, he held that it is already the portion of 
every sinner. “Christ,” as he said, “is laid down at every door.” 
“Salvation by faith does not mean that mankind are pardoned on 
account of their faith or by their faith. No, its meaning is far dif¬ 
ferent. It means that they are pardoned already before they thought 
of it,” and that they have only to realize what is already theirs to en¬ 
joy all the blessings of salvation. Pardon, in other words, is uni¬ 
versal. The Gospel is a great scheme of universal restoration 
through Christ, which meets and remedies all the loss of the Fall. 
Men no longer need forgiveness, for they already have forgiveness 
in Christ. What they need is a consciousness of this—a subjective 
experience of the objective’divine fact accomplished for them in 
Christ. Through God’s great mercy, if they only knew it, pardon is 
theirs already. 

All who are familiar with the theology of Mr. Maurice, in his 
books and in his remarkable letters recently published, will find 
there the expanded echo of this teaching. Mr. Maurice himself 
frankly owns this (1852) in dedicating one of his volumes* to Mr. 
Erskine. The general character of this theology therefore will again 
come before us, and we need only now fix its place in the develop¬ 
ment of Mr. Erskine’s thought. 

His volumes on “The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel ” and 
“ The Brazen Serpent” (1831) may be said to sum up his teaching. 
He continued to publish, but it cannot be said that he added any¬ 
thing further to the characteristics of his religious thought. “ The 
Brazen Serpent ” is the most theological of his writings, and particu¬ 
larly attracted Mr. Maurice, but it did not reach the same circula¬ 
tion as his preceding treatises, f It contains in germ much of the 
same thinking which afterwards, in the more powerful reflective 
mind of Dr. Macleod Campbell, expanded into his well - known 
treatise on “ The Nature of the Atonement.” 

Whatever we may think of Mr. Erskine’s views—and we are in a 
far better position now to judge of their merits and defects than his 
own generation was—there can hardly be any question of their vari¬ 
ance with the popular theology of Scotland. Dr. Chalmers is said % 
to have cordially approved of “ the leading principles of his essay 


* “ The Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament,” 1852. 
t All Mr. Erskine’s first books, “On the Internal Evidence for the 
Truth of Revealed Religion” (1820), his “Essay on Faith” (1822), and 
“The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel,” went through many edi¬ 
tions, were translated into French, and the first also into German. 

\ Dr. Hanna’s edition of “ Mr. Erskine’s Letters,” vol. i., p. 127. 



MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 93 


on ‘The Freeness of the Gospel,’ ” though dissenting from “one of 
its positions,” and to have expressed over and over again to his 
friends his pleasure in the volume as one of “the most delightful 
books that ever had been written.” There was a large-heartedness 
in Chalmers that responded to its free and generous views, and in 
that and some other matters he did not care for logical consistency. 
But Dr. Andrew Thomson was the truer interpreter of the mind of 
Scotland as well as of the differences between the new and the old 
theology. Whatever we may think of the spirit of many of his 
criticisms, he saw clearly and with logical acumen within his own 
sphere of vision, and there is an argumentative as well as vindictive 
force in some of his replies. What is most remarkable to a student 
nowadays in both is the lack of historical knowledge in dealing with 
Christian dogma. Mr. Erskine is perhaps more deficient in this re¬ 
spect than his opponent. He has no consciousness of the real rela¬ 
tion of his views to the older theology, or again to Arminianism, or 
again how far he was merely reviving or bringing forth anew aspects 
of ancient doctrine. He was consequently astonished at the con¬ 
demnation which his book called forth. A larger acquaintance with 
the history of theological opinion would have enabled him to see 
that a good deal of his distinctive teaching was not new in the thought 
of the Church, and on the other hand that it touched so very differ¬ 
ent a pole of thought from that of the theology of the Westminster 
divines that it was sure to evoke violent offence and discussion. 

His mind was at once questioning and meditative—but he had 
never been a student of theology in any scientific sense, nor indeed 
in any large traditionary sense. So it was that the result of his own 
meditation upon Scripture came to him with a surprised delight, 
and seemed a Gospel unknown before, or at least unknown in Scot¬ 
land. Constantly in his letters he deplores the darkness of the gen¬ 
eral Christian teaching; and there was ground for much that he 
says; but it was also true that the universal aspect of the Gospel 
had never been lost sight of in the Scottish Church in its most Cal- 
vinistic moods. No Calvinist, however rigidly he clung to his sys¬ 
tem, would have allowed that he limited the offer of Divine Love in 
the Gospel, or that any who chose to accept the offer was excluded 
from the pale of salvation.* Here, as everywhere, we are noting 
facts, and not dealing with theological difficulties or refinements. 


* It must be conceded that Mr. Erskine at times somewhat wilfully 
misinterprets the current Theology, as in saying that it held that man is 
justified “on account of his faith or by his faith,” whereas it is a well- 
known commonplace of Calvinism that faith is in no sense the operative , 
but only the instrumental cause of salvation. 



94 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


And it admits of no question that Scottish theologians, from Knox 
and Samuel Rutherfurd to Chalmers, have ever enforced with pa¬ 
thetic power the claim of the Divine Love upon sinners. Their 
technical theology may seem to have been inconsistent with this; it 
was so in Mr. Erskine’s eyes; but no technical theology can alter 
facts, nor, indeed, resist the impulses of Divine affection in Christian 
hearts. There were many, therefore, in Mr. Erskine’s day who, 
while refusing to accept his way of putting the matter, or the form 
of the Gospel as set forth by him, would yet have maintained that 
they held all that was true and scriptural in his teaching. 

It is melancholy, indeed, to reflect how at this critical period in 
the history of the Scottish Church, as in similar periods of Church 
history, men—on both sides—became excited over modes of language, 
and sought to emphasize the difference rather than the identity of 
their Christian conceptions. This is sufficiently conspicuous in the 
polemic which gathered around Mr. Erskine and his books; but it is 
still more evident, as it had far more serious consequences, in the 
new phase of the movement which meets us on the shores of the 
Gareloch, and in which Mr. Macleod Campbell was the chief figure. 

Mr. Campbell was settled in the parish of Row, lying on the Dum¬ 
barton shore of the beautiful Gareloch, in 1825—the year, it will be 
remembered, in which the ‘ ‘ Aids to Reflection ” saw the light. He 
had grown up, if possible, in a still more sequestered parish, Kilnin- 
ver, where his father had ministered for a lifetime, and where the 
savor of his honored name still lingers. After a career of promise 
at Glasgow College and a year’s study in Edinburgh, 1821-22, he 
spent the intervening time before he settled at Row in reading and 
further study, chiefly of a philosophic kind. His father’s sympathies 
w r ere in the main with the “Moderate” party. He delighted in the 
study of Tillotson and Samuel Clarke. Young Campbell therefore 
did not imbibe any hyper-Evangelical doctrine in his youth, and yet 
there was in him from the first such a tendency. It was always the 
fear of his old tutor that he would become “too high.” His early 
ministry was one of simple faith and conviction. He kept aloof 
from parties in the Church, and gave himself to his duties with un¬ 
tiring devotion. Never was Christian minister more divinely called. 
He was born to preach the Gospel and to counsel and guide others 
in the Divine life. He had the true Apostolical succession, if ever 
man had, and what he had he retained. The same Divine unction 
lay upon all his words, and the same blessing followed him wherever 
he went. It is impossible to conceive a ministry more divinely con¬ 
secrated and sustained, and yet more in the face of all Church theo¬ 
ry. He was as plainly “called to be a minister of Jesus Christ 
through the will of God ” as any Apostle ever was, and his divine 


MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 95 

calling remained independent of any ecclesiastical sanction, and even 
grew richer in his isolation. The fact is beyond question, whatever 
our theories may make of it. 

. Difficulties soon arose in the course of a ministry so earnest and 
personal as Mr. Campbell’s. As he studied the Scriptures diligently, 
and visited his people constantly, he became impressed with the lack 
of vital piety. He found many interested in religion, but few living 
holy lives. The higher the standard he set before his people the 
less did they seem to reach, in his opinion, a true standard at all. 
He pondered the cause of this, and came to the conclusion that it 
was because they did not feel sure of God’s good-will to them as in¬ 
dividuals. They required to be taught the very first step in religion, 
the being “assured of the Divine love in Christ.” Hence his “doc¬ 
trine of the assurance of faith,” by which he seemed at first at least 
to mean the assurance of an objective fact—the Divine Father’s love 
—rather than of a subjective state—as if a man could never fall from 
grace. But here in the nature of his language the first opening was 
given for heretical charge against him. Then came the further 
thought, How can any man in particular know that God loves him 
unless Christ has died for all —unless the Gospel be a “Gospel,” or 
Divine gift, to every human being? Otherwise, he thought, “ there 
was no foundation in the Record of God for the assurance which he 
demanded, and which he saw to be essential to true holiness.” Hence 
his further doctrine of Universal Atonement. 

He described, not without a touch of unconscious humor, how 
those who had been most satisfied with his teaching on the subject 
of Assurance were particularly displeased with his teaching as to 
the Universality of the Atonement. It seemed to them that if Christ 
died for all, then the individual Christian was deprived of assurance 
in his own case. Others, again, who had been offended by his 
preaching Assurance, were still more offended by his combining 
with this doctrine that of universal pardon. 

There can be no doubt that there was much confusion both of 
thought and language lying at the foundation of what is known as 
the Row heresy. In a certain respect Mr. Campbell’s teaching was 
beyond challenge. That God loves every creature that He lias made, 
that Christ died for all men, are commonplaces of Christian theol- 
ogy—but not so the doctrine that “assurance is of the essence of 
faith,” or that all men are pardoned in the sense of being saved. 
Preacher and accusers misunderstood one another, and the longer 
they argued they misunderstood the more. It would be wrong to 
lay all the blame of this upon the accusers. Mr. Campbell was not 
only fond of his own phrases, but he had that tendency common to 
the dogmatic mind to take his phrases for an essential part of Di- 


96 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


vine truth. In 1829, when the agitation against his teaching was 
reaching its height, he makes the remarkable confession, “ I know 
that I might preach the truth without challenge if I avoided two 
things—innovations of language such as saying that all are pardoned, 
and personal interrogations, such as, ‘Are you born again?’ ‘Do 
you know yourself to be a child of God?’ ” But these modes of 
speech were necessary, he imagined, to the expression of his own 
thought. What he meant was that all are pardoned in the ampli¬ 
tude of the Divine love, and if they would only realize it, all are al¬ 
ready, by the act of God Himself, His own children; but he was 
supposed to mean that all are already saved and the children of 
God, whether they realized it or not, whether they lived as the chil¬ 
dren of God or not. He was speaking of the ideal in Christ—the 
Church redeemed and sanctified in Him. Others were thinking of 
men and women as they generally are, unconscious of their Divine 
privileges. The assertion that all were pardoned was translated into 
the notion of salvation without regard to morality, or even any con¬ 
sciousness of true religion; and did not Antinomianism, therefore, 
hang on the skirts of such preaching? Nothing could have been 
further from Mr. Campbell’s thoughts. It was the very intensity of 
his desire for holy living among his people that made him dwell 
upon the assured love of God to them as the true and only root of 
such holy living. It was his craving after the very life of God in 
himself and others which made him so emphasize the love of God 
to sinners. But there was none the less a certain danger in his 
modes of speech, especially when taken up and translated by minds 
with none of his spiritual insight. Like his friend Erskine, he saw 
not only to the heart of the Gospel, but he saw it always as an ideal 
whole—faith, hope, charity, love, light, holiness, all blended in one. 
His conception of the Divine was essentially concrete. His assur¬ 
ance of the Divine Love in the forgiveness of sins already contained 
in it the whole idea of salvation. But the common theological in¬ 
telligence has abstracted and divided the several parts of the Divine 
life. It does not hold pardon and holiness, love and law, assurance 
and conduct, together in their necessary nexus as he did. And to 
this state of mind “universal pardon” is indiscriminate salvation. 

The case was one for forbearance and conference. Unhappily it 
developed rapidly into prosecution. There had been growing of¬ 
fence at Mr. Campbell’s preaching. He had become marked along 
with Mr. Erskine as the centre of a new school of thought within 
the Church. The latter had heard him preach in Edinburgh appar¬ 
ently in the spring of 1828. Returning from church, he said, with 
emphasis, “I have heard to-day from that pulpit what I believe to 
be the true Gospel.” The same summer found Mr. Erskine at Row, 


MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 97 

united in a close and warm friendship with the pastor. Others 
joined the brotherhood sooner or later—Mr. Story, minister of Rose- 
neath, across the Gareloch ; Mr. Scott, afterwards well Known as 
Principal of Owens College, Manchester; Edward Irving, and others 
less prominent. They became credited with an attempt to upset the 
old Calvinistic doctrine. The idea of some such combination un¬ 
doubtedly possessed the minds, of many, and may be held so far to 
explain the sad series of events which followed. 

It is needless to pass any harsh judgment now on what took place, 
nor is this the place to describe the sequel at length. But it must 
ever remain a matter of regret that the Church did not weigh more 
deliberately her line of action, and realize more solemnly all its 
meaning. No Church was ever more blessed than the Church of 
Scotland then was in these men of Christian genius whom she rash¬ 
ly cast from her bosom. They were all men of truly prophetic 
spirit, and who knows what healing might have come to Irving’s 
great but perturbed mind if he had been tenderly cared for and 
sheltered within the Church of his Fathers instead of being rudely 
pushed outside of it! It was a favorite topic with Mr. Erskine in af¬ 
ter years—the great wrong which the Church had done to herself 
in this matter. Principal Shairp has recorded that “ he never ceased 
to regard Mr. Campbell’s deposition as the stoning by the Church of 
her best Prophet, the deliberate rejection of the highest light vouch¬ 
safed to her in his time;” and that in his eyes all the calamities that 
soon befell the Church were as judgments for her wrong-doing. 

The proceedings in Mr. Campbell’s case assumed before they 
closed a specially interesting phase. He passed in his defence from 
the discussion of the special heretical doctrines with which he was 
charged to the higher question, as to whether the doctrines—admit¬ 
ting them to be beyond the ‘ * Confession of Faith ”—were not yet 
obligatory upon the Church as being the truth of God ? Is the 
Church not bound to acknowledge any higher light of truth than 
she has hitherto received if made manifest from the Divine Word? 
Is it not of the very function of the Church to declare anew the 
truth when new light comes to her? A famous passage in the Scot¬ 
tish Confession of 1560, which both Campbell and Edward Irving 
preferred greatly to the later Puritan or Westminster Confession, 
was quoted on the subject, to the effect that Scripture was ac- 
knowledgedly the Supreme Rule of Faith, and that no sentence or 
article is to be received that can be shown to be inconsistent with 
its plain teaching. Mr. Campbell did not then allow that his doc¬ 
trines were inconsistent with a fair interpretation of the Westminster 
Confession of Faith, but granting there was any doubt of this, he 
appealed with confidence to Holy Scripture for their authority, and 

7 


98 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


he maintained that the true principle of the Church was, not to put 
her Confession on a level with Holy Scripture, or to cast any from 
her bosom except on the ground that they taught what was not ac¬ 
cording to the Word of God. “If you show me,” he said, “that 
anything I have taught is inconsistent with the Word of God, I shall 
give it up, and allow you to regard it as heresy. ... If a Confes¬ 
sion of Faith were something to stint or stop the Church’s growth 
in light and knowledge, and to say, ‘ Thus far shalt thou go and no 
farther,’ then a Confession of Faith would be the greatest curse 
that ever befell a church. Therefore I distinctly hold that no min¬ 
ister treats the Confession of Faith right if he does not come with 
it, as a party, to the Word of God, and consent to stand or fall by 
the Word of God, and to acknowledge no other tribunal in matters 
of heresy than the Word of God. In matters of doctrine no lower 
authority can be recognized than that of God. ” * 

The question thus opened was a highly significant one. Half a 
century ago, however, it was too searching and bold a departure to 
be iikely to help Mr. Campbell at the bar of any Synod or Assem¬ 
bly of the Church, the more so that it was combined in his case with 
a certain element of dogma offensive to the ‘ ‘ moderate ” clergy, and 
by no means fitted in itself to strengthen Mr. Campbell’s position. 
He did not argue, for example, in favor of a general latitude of 
interpretation. On the contrary, he expressly repudiated such a lat¬ 
itude. He did not say, I claim for myself a wider application of 
the Gospel in the light of the Divine word, as I am willing to allow 
a similar width of interpretation to others who have departed as far 
from the letter of the Confession as I may have done. It is of the 
very nature of a document like the Confession to be subject, as 
time advances, to meanings of a more flexible character than those 
which may have been in the view of its original framers. This 
broad and common-sense principle was not only not in Mr. Camp¬ 
bell’s mind, but was rejected by him at this stage of his career, f 
He was not content that his views should be tolerated. He claimed 
recognition for them as “the truth of God.” Both he and Mr. 
Erskine, with all their personal humility and insight into the per¬ 
plexities of the religious mind, were essentially dogmatic in their 
turn of thought. They failed, as all connected with the movement 
more or less failed, in historical knowledge, in appreciation of the 


* From speech of Mr. Campbell before the bar of Synod of Glasgow 
and Ayr, which he regarded as the best exposition of his side of the case. 

t He speaks disparagingly, for example, in his defence of the “ charity ” 
that is indulgent to all manner of opinions, and which regards “ speaking 
dogmatically as necessarily an evil.”—“Memorials,” vol. i., p. 80. 




MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 99 

growth of Christian doctrine, and the manner in which higher and 
lower moments fit into one another in the great progress of the 
Church. They would have all to stand on the same level as them¬ 
selves, and they did not hesitate to judge the Christianity of others 
from their own point of view. They not only had the true light, 
but all those who opposed them, or who were unable to see the 
truth as they saw it, were in darkness. There is something painful, 
I confess, in their readiness of judgment, and their incapacity to 
recognize how much Christian good there may be in opinions dif¬ 
fering from their own—in other words, in their failure to perceive 
the impossibility of any form of words—of one school or another— 
containing what they called “the truth of God ” to the exclusion of 
all others. They did not, in short, rise above the dogmatic temper 
of the time, while they sought to enrich its dogmatic thought. Af¬ 
terwards they attained higher views. The searching discussions of 
a later time in England helped them to realize, more than was pos¬ 
sible in those earlier in Scotland, the historical conditions underly¬ 
ing all dogmatic statements of Divine truth, the value of free opin¬ 
ion, and of tolerating within the Church the expression of such 
opinion.* Mr. Campbell, indeed, never lost his profound feeling 
for dogma, or “the truth of God,” as he called it. His first and 
main thought as to any new views was always, “are they true?” 
Historical criticism, of which he confessed he knew little, never 
touched the inner sphere of his own conviction; but he came to 
appreciate its importance, and how much it must affect and to a cer¬ 
tain extent limit all conclusions drawn from Scripture, f 
The same General Assembly which deposed Mr. Campbell de¬ 
prived his friend, Mr. Scott, of his license as a preacher of the 
gospel. They held the same views, with this difference, that Scott 
acknowledged from the first their inconsistency with the “Confes¬ 
sion of Faith.” It is said that Campbell came to acknowledge this 
also, as he walked home with his friend from the General Assem¬ 
bly, “the dawn breaking upon them” as they sought their iodg- 
ings.j: It must be allowed that the current thinking of the Church 
fifty years ago was opposed to the doctrine preached by both—a 
conclusive illustration of which is found in the combination of the 
two parties, “Moderate ” and “ Evangelical,” in the sentence passed 
upon Mr. Campbell. His aged father interposed at the end with 


* In 1856 he wrote, “ I am sure free discussion within the Church is 
better than the constant necessity to form a new sect, if one has any new 
thought to utter.”—“ Memorials,” vol. i., p. 276. 
t “ Memorials,” vol. ii., pp. 8-43. 

X Dr. Hanna, “Erskine’s Letters,” vol. i., p. 140. 




100 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


one of the most touching speeches ever heard in any Assembly, in 
which, divesting his son’s doctrine of all novelty of language, he 
claimed it to be the same doctrine they all taught. The emotion of 
Dr. Macknight, then chief clerk of Assembly, is said to have been 
such that he gave utterance to strange words, ominous as to the 
future of the Church. But the fiat had gone forth; and, by a large 
and nearly unanimous vote,* Mr. Campbell’s connection with the 
Church of Scotland was severed. 

Mr. Campbell’s after-life, and the quiet course of earnest thought 
which led to his great work on “ The Nature of the Atonement,” by 
which he came to have an honored name in all the churches, and to 
take rank as one of the most profound theologians of the nineteenth 
century, belong to a later epoch. There have been few more strik¬ 
ing instances of the reward of the righteous than his life presents. 
His sweetness of nature, and the constant indwelling of his “fun¬ 
damental faith ” in the great love of God to all human souls, kept 
him free from all sectarian association in the midst of his isolation. 
He never ceased to have a warm heart towards the Church which 
cast him forth. He grew in ever deeper knowledge of Divine Truth; 
and his work on the “Atonement,” and a smaller volume a few 
years later on “Revelation,” remain treasures to the Christian 
Church in all time to come. 

The General Assembly of 1831 not only discarded Campbell and 
Scott, but also initiated proceedings against Edward Irving. Ir¬ 
ving’s is too great a name to be omitted in our review of the relig¬ 
ious movement of this time—and yet there is a sense in which he 
hardly belongs to it. With all our admiration of his genius—and 
in point of genius he stands in some respects unrivalled among his 
contemporaries—he was never at any time of his life a thinker. He 
was a great power; but the elements of his power lay in the region 
of spiritual life, of oratorical impulse, and not of spiritual thought. 
His “Orations,” published in 1823 in the second year of his London 
ministry, taken as a whole, are the highest expression of his mind, 
and their characteristics are grandeur of imagination, richness of 
poetic and spiritual conception, and fulness of vivid feeling rather 
than any glow of higher insight, penetrating to the deeper problems 
of religion. They fail in clear-sighted intelligence and definite or 
even suggestive development of ideas. We cannot better mark this 
than by saying that no one would think now of having recourse to 
Irving’s “Orations,” or any of his works, as they would have re¬ 
course either to Mr. Erskine’s volume, or to Mr. Campbell’s, in 


* 119 to 6. The words attributed to Dr. Macknight will be found in 
Mr. Erskine’s “Letters,” ed. by Dr. Hanna, vol. i., p. 137. 




MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 101 

order to understand the higher aspects of religious inquiry towards 
which his age was moving. He was the superior of both in much; 
the question is not one of personal comparison at all; but they 
reached their idea along lines of pure spiritual insight, whereas 
Irving was caught in the whirl of his own strong emotions, and 
carried forward by their overpowering rush. The most lovable of 
men—“the brotherliest human soul,” as Carlyle said of him—he 
was open to impressions from all sides. Carlyle himself, Chalmers, 
Coleridge, Campbell, all contributed to give him impulse, till he 
sunk at last under an order of impressions equally disastrous and 
unworthy of him. Coleridge he confessed to be his greatest teacher, 
but he failed to catch the higher spirit of Coleridge’s thought. 
“You have been more profitable to my faith in orthodox doctrine, 
to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my right 
conception of the Church,” he said to the Highgate philosopher in 
dedicating to him his famous missionary sermon, * ‘ than any or all the 
men with whom I have entertained friendship and conversation.” 

Yet with all Irving’s susceptibility of impression there was in him 
from the first not merely the element of dogma belonging to his 
time, but a supreme dogmatism amounting to priestliness. Docile 
as a pupil, he was inflexible when once he received any principle 
into his mind. Constantly craving after what was positive and 
authoritative in religion, he was ready to welcome new truth, espe¬ 
cially if coming from some transcendental region or enforced with 
high personal pretensions, yet he seemed incapable of revising his 
accumulated convictions. He was, in short, wholly destitute of the 
critical intellect. He never knew what it was to hold his mind in 
doubt or suspense. Of Biblical interpretation he knew nothing in 
any true sense, or of the historical conditions underlying the whole 
history of revelation and Christian thought. The modern spirit- 
liberalism in all its forms—was as hateful to him as to Dr. Newman. 
The age seemed to him moving towards perdition, and the critics 
and intellectualists of all sorts only helping it onward. The talent 
of Byron and Southey was alike diabolical. Milton was the “arch¬ 
angel” and Brougham the “archfiend” of radicalism; the London 
University “the synagogue of Satan,” and Catholic emancipation 
“the unchristianizing of the legislature.” 

This was not the temper of a thinker, nor even of a large-minded 
prophet. It indicated unhealthiness from the first. Grand as was 
his genius there was a lurid play in it—the working, not of thought, 
but of spiritual passion. He moved on a scale of lofty but uncurbed 
emotion. His great ambition for the Gospel was to make it “ more 
heroical and magnanimous,” but he lacked the balance of philoso¬ 
phy and of common-sense for so great a task. 


102 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


It is hardly to he wondered at that a spirit so high, yet so imper¬ 
fectly balanced, should erelong have plunged into difficulties. As 
his fame grew as a preacher, many eyes watched him with admira¬ 
tion; some, like his friend Carlyle, with fear; others with envy. A 
cry arose that he was preaching heresy as to our Lord’s human 
nature. The truth was, as is now universally admitted, that in this 
matter Irving had really reverted to an older and more catholic 
type of doctrine. It had not been customary in Scotland to dwell 
on the Incarnation in connection with the sufferings and atonement 
of Christ. Irving saw, as Dr. Campbell afterwards* so powerfully 
developed, their organic connection. The reality of Christ’s human 
nature, “as bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh,” became a car¬ 
dinal point of his theology. Christ took upon Him our nature, not 
in any abstract or unreal form, but with all its sinful tendencies. In 
Him it was sinless, but not through any quality making it to differ 
from humanity in general, but through “ the indwelling of the Holy 
Ghostr” That he ever meant to inculcate the actual sinfulness of 
Christ’s human nature, no candid mind can maintain. But he 
was at fault here, as often, from the rhetorical extravagance of his 
language. He used unguardedly such expressions as that “Christ’s 
human nature was in all respects as ours!” “fallen and sinful”—he 
meant in the potency, not in the fact of sin. But the subject was 
not one easily understood, while it was easily misrepresented. Not¬ 
withstanding all his disclaimers, it was ultimately made the ground 
of libel against him before the Presbytery of Annan, and, after some¬ 
thing of a mock trial, he was deposed in the spring of 1833. 

There were other influences, however, at work leading to Edward 
Irving’s deposition. He had not only associated himself with Mr. 
Campbell from the year 1828, when he came to the Gareloch to visit 
him, but he had become identified, in a manner Mr. Campbell never 
was, with the religious extravagances which arose in this quarter in 
1830. First the “gift of Tongues,” and then the “gift of Healing” 
were supposed to have revisited the Church in the person of certain 
invalids in the parish of Roseneath and the town of Greenock. The 
phenomena were unquestionably of a singular character f—apparent¬ 
ly so united with divine faith and holy lives that they carried away 
Mr. Erskine as well as Edward Irving. The healthier nature of the 
former, however, threw off the infection. Irving, with his mind 
enfeebled by the morbid study of prophecy, and the exhausting ex¬ 
citements of his London career, was not only taken captive himself, 
but under his encouragement the delusion extended to his congrega- 


* “Nature of the Atonement,” 1856. 
t See Mrs. Oliphant’s “Life,” vol. ii., p. 102 et seq. 



MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 103 


tion. “Bedlam and Chaos,” as Carlyle says, was the result. The 
congregation became violently divided. His friends remonstrated; 
but all was in vain. The spiritual fever had gone to his brain. It 
was “impossible to make an impression on him.” He was left in 
hopeless loneliness amid the fanatics that surrounded him; and so 
passed away from living connection with his age before he received 
the sentence of expulsion from the Church so dear to him. 

With all our love and admiration of Edward Irving, we cannot 
regard him in any true sense as a leader of Christian opinion. But 
if he did not move its thought, he greatly helped to deepen its relig*- 
ious consciousness. All men recognized in him a spiritual power; 
a representative, at least in his earlier London years, of religion, as 
entitled not only to acknowledgment and sovereignty over all oth¬ 
er interests, but as the most magnificent reality which can claim 
human attention. He was, in short, as Coleridge said of him, “a 
mighty wrestler in the cause of spiritual religion and Gospel mo¬ 
rality.” 

Our task is well-nigh done in this lecture. Its chronological 
limits are to be carefully noted. Mr. Erskine’s first book was pub¬ 
lished in 1820, and Edward Irving died in 1834. What is known as 
the Row movement, with which the three names we have reviewed 
were more or less closely connected, had run its course by the last 
of these dates. This was the special theological interest of the time 
in Scotland, and in its higher aspects it was distinctively a movement 
of religious thought, the effects of which survive in many forms. 
Had we been able to extend our review we might have considered 
the fresh accession of Evangelical life which began in the Church of 
Scotland at the same time, and rose into continuous and increasing 
strength for ten years later. Two names above all represent this 
movement—Dr. Andrew Thomson and Dr. Chalmers—to both of 
whom we have more than once alluded. The name of Chalmers is 
in all the churches honored as one of Christian genius consecrated 
to the highest services which any man can render to his church and 
his country. His characteristic work, however, was not in the field 
of Christian thought. He broke out no new lines in this field. He 
initiated no new movement. Both he and Andrew Thomson were 
powerful leaders on the old lines—the latter with inferior, although 
stanch intellectual weapons. Both were great orators beyond ques¬ 
tion, the former excelling in massive, sustained, and overpowering 
vehemence—the latter in logical fervor and freedom of utterance. 
In both the Evangelical section of the Church, which for a time had 
succumbed in intellectual repute to the moderate party represented 
by men like Principal Robertson and Principal Hill, received an ac¬ 
cession of strength which carried it erelong to predominance, and 


104 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


told significantly on the subsequent course of events. Chalmers had 
much the broader sympathies of the two. He was, we have seen, 
the friend and correspondent of Erskine, and is said to have shared 
many of his views. It is alleged also that he looked on the proceed¬ 
ings against Irving and Campbell with disapproving eyes. Possi¬ 
bly, if he had been a man of more independent, courageous, and clear¬ 
sighted vision than he was, he might have done something to stay 
these proceedings or guide them to a more lenient result. But the 
panic which moved the Church at the time was too real to have been 
easily stayed; and Chalmers did nothing. Andrew Thomson sud¬ 
denly died in the midst of his labors in the same year that Campbell 
was deposed, and left the guidance of the Church to younger men, 
of whom the world has heard, but not in connection with the prog¬ 
ress of Christian thought. The great politico-ecclesiastical move¬ 
ment which they led is beyond our province. 

There is still one name, however, that deserves to be recalled be¬ 
fore we close. There was published during the course of the Row 
excitement a series of anonymous volumes, chiefly of a devotional 
character, which excited a good deal of attention from the graceful 
and interesting style in which they were written. They were felt to 
be unlike the ordinary devotional literature of Scotland—even more 
so in some respects than Mr. Erskine’s volumes had been. For Mr. 
Erskine, layman as he was, used much of the old theological phrase¬ 
ology. It is strange indeed to a modem reader to observe how 
very technical many of his expressions are—expressions not much 
heard now even in the pulpit. The anonymous books in question 
were singularly free from all this conventional phraseology. Their 
style was as clear and pure as Dr. Arnold’s sermons—with less sub¬ 
stance, but even a more winning and flexible grace. The best known 
of them was a manual of Prayers under the title of “ The Morning 
and Evening Sacrifice,” which soon established itself as a familiar 
devotional companion in many households. I remember the leader 
of the moderate party—who unhappily moved the sentence against 
Mr. Campbell—saying that he had long used this volume at morn¬ 
ing and evening prayer without the faintest suspicion that it con¬ 
tained any heresy. Other volumes from the same source were “The 
Last Supper,” also a devotional manual, “ Farewell to Time: A Man¬ 
ual of Conduct;” but especially a work in three volumes under the 
title of “The True Plan of a Living Temple,” published in 1830. 
This work contained the author’s system of thought, and unlike the 
others, whose quiet and beautiful devotional feeling attracted inter¬ 
est and nothing more, it soon began to excite inquiry and criticism. 
The Christian Instructor, ever on the watch for the orthodoxy of the 
Church, reviewed it at length in its March number, 1831, expressing 


MOVEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 105 


admiration of its literary merits, but emphasizing its theology as 
“not only defective, but positively pernicious.” 

It must be admitted that “ The True Plan of a Living Temple ” 
presents many features open to criticism. It not only opposes itself 
confessedly to the prevalent course of religious ideas—“ the current 
doctrines of divines and moralists ”—but it sets forth at large a phi¬ 
losophy of life little consistent with Calvinistic teaching. The Gos¬ 
pel is viewed mainly as a means, among many others, of generating 
the principles of order and goodness which are everywhere seen in 
conflict with the principles of disorder and vice. The world-process 
is a process of good triumphing over evil—a Divine kingdom every¬ 
where displacing the rule of evil; and the great function of Christi¬ 
anity is to reinforce the good against the evil, to extend “ the preva¬ 
lence of knowledge and virtue and concord and freedom and happi¬ 
ness among men. ” 

It is enough to quote such a sentence to show how very different 
a note this book strikes from the usual note of religious orthodoxy. 
Nor were many of its special ideas less at variance with the latter. 
Our Lord is represented as speaking only of a “Father in Heaven” 
who views all His creatures with love and pity. This is “ the fine 
idea on which His doctrine is founded—by which it is pervaded; 
and by means of it he sought for mankind the three following ob¬ 
jects : first, the improvement of their religious worship; secondly, 
the perfection of their moral ideas; and lastly, the regulation of 
their social situations. Suffering and punishment, while entering 
into the divine constitution of things—“ the true plan of the living 
temple”—are not “retributive,”or, to use the author’s own expres¬ 
sion, “vindictive”—only “corrective.” The book, in short, embod¬ 
ies a contemplative philosophy of human progress rather than any 
exposition of the Gospel conceived after a Calvinistic model. It is 
humanitarian rather than theological, the work of a thoughtful stu¬ 
dent living in a world of his own rather than of a Christian preach¬ 
er. It contains many fine trains of reflection—thin in texture, and 
here and there feeble in grasp of moral realities—but beautiful in 
imaginative feeling and almost always graceful in literary expres¬ 
sion. Anything less like the current theology cannot be conceived 
—and this effect of contrast was greatly heightened by scattered al¬ 
lusions and criticisms in the book. Howe, for example, revered by 
all Puritan thinkers, was spoken of as having “a strong tinge of fa¬ 
naticism;” Calvin was “ the prince of dogmatists;” and Bunyan and 
Wesley are “ notorious specimens of enthusiasm.” 

It is needless to say that the book, so far as itf excited public inter¬ 
est, was very distasteful to the orthodox clergy. But there were 
difficulties in the way of meddling with it. While its spirit and 


106 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


many of its reflections were so obviously alien to the Creed of the 
Church, it did not announce any definite heretical teaching. More 
than all, its author was invisible. I do not know how far he may 
have been known at this time to those who were at the pains to in¬ 
quire, but his anonymity secured him from public comment; while 
he plainly did not claim to be a heresiarch, or to attach, as Mr. Camp¬ 
bell and others had done, vital importance to his views. No steps, 
therefore, were taken against the book during all the orthodox fer¬ 
ment of the early time, when not only Campbell and Irving, but 
others more or less in sympathy with them, were cast out of the 
Church. It was not till nearly ten years later that the author be¬ 
came the subject of prosecution, and finally of expulsion from the 
Church. It gradually came to be known that the writer of the 
volumes was a quiet country clergyman, Mr. Wright of Borthwick, 
in the neighborhood of Dalkeith, a friend of Sir Walter Scott, and 
spoken of with commendation in his journal—a scholarly contem¬ 
plative man, whose preaching had much of the same quiet thought¬ 
fulness and pensive beauty as his books. It would have been well 
to have spared him in his advanced years, or at the most to have 
admonished him to write no more. But the evangelical fervor, 
which culminated in the “Disruption,” was then running to its 
height. His Presbytery was instructed to libel him by the General 
Assembly of 1839; and in 1841, the same year in which the Strath- 
bogie ministers were deposed for contumacy to the orders of the 
Assembly, Mr. Wright of Borthwick’s ministerial career was brought 
to an end. There were circumstances of peculiar harshness in his 
case very unpleasant to recall. He himself declared that he “dis¬ 
owned and abjured every one of the errors ” laid to his charge, and 
that the extracts from his books on which they were founded, right¬ 
ly understood, did not at all sustain them. By a large vote he was 
refused any liberty of explanation, and unlike some who had stood 
in the same position, surrounded by their friends—ready to receive 
them when cast out—Mr. Wright went forth from the Church a 
homeless old man. It was the heyday of evangelical zeal; but the 
blessing of that “charity that sufferetli long and is kind” certainly 
did not rest on this General Assembly or its high-handed leaders. 

Nothing seems more remarkable in closing this review than the 
brief period within which all these phenomena of religious thought 
were crowded. They are all virtually the product of the third dec¬ 
ade of the century, marked in England by the religious philosophy 
of Coleridge and the liberalism of the early Oriel School. There 
has seldom been in our national history a more fruitful epoch of 
religious thought. And the same general character is more, or less 
stamped on all its manifestations, various as-these otherwise are. 


MOVEMENT OP RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND. 10 ? 

This character may be said to be expansiveness. The theological 
mind is seen opening in all directions. There is a general breaking 
up of the old close traditional systems transmitted from the earlier 
time. The idea of God as the loving Father of all men—of the re¬ 
ligious life as having its root in immediate contact with the Divine, 
rather than in adherence to any definite forms; whether of Church 
belief or Church order; the recognition of the religious conscious¬ 
ness as a pervading element of human nature with its own rights 
in the face of Revelation, and especially in the face of the scholastic 
dogmas which had been based on Revelation ; the desire after a 
more concrete and living faith merging into one the abstractions of 
theological nomenclature ; and more than all, perhaps, an optimist 
Catholic ideal displacing the sectarian ideals of the older schools of 
thought; all these larger features meet us with more or less promi¬ 
nence. Teaching like Mr. Erskine’s, Archbishop Whately’s, or that 
of the author of the “ True Plan of the Living Temple ”—however 
unlike otherwise—unite in taking a more expansive and optimist 
view of the range of Christianity and its relation to human nature 
and life. The change of tone in this respect from the poetry of 
Cowper, for example, or the theology of Mr. Erskine’s uncle, the 
old minister of Greyfriars, whose portrait survives in “Guy Man- 
nering;” or again, from the piety of such a home as that of Keble’s 
father, or even of Maurice’s father, is immense. One feels in pass¬ 
ing from the one to the other as emerging into wider air and larger 
room. The intellect plays with a higher freedom. Religion has 
grown grander and “more majestical.” It emphasizes less the dis¬ 
tinction between the Church and the world—the “clean” and the 
unclean. It claims a wider sovereignty—a more powerful and ex¬ 
tended hold of humanity; in short, a more real Catholicism than any 
church had yet assigned it. The reaction set in again during the 
following decade with the Oxford School in England and a “high¬ 
flying ” Evangelicalism in Scotland. But modern Christianity has 
never lost the richer mental tone and broader spirit of love that in¬ 
fused themselves into it in the earlier decade. It has shown a larger 
spirit ever since. 


108 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Y. 

THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 

In our lectures hitherto we have surveyed the phenomena of 
religious thought as in the main developed within the churches. 
Even Coleridge stands in close connection with the Church of Eng¬ 
land, of which he was a devoted member, and within whose borders 
his teaching chiefly spread. Nonconformity, rich as it was in works 
of philanthropy and evangelical earnestness, did not originate any 
new lines of Christian thought. Robert Hall was perhaps its great¬ 
est name in the first quarter of the century,-* in massive and brilliant 
intellectuality he was unequalled; and the fame of his preaching 
still survives; but he propagated no new ideas, nor can he be said 
to have been a new force in religious literature. Nothing can be 
more barren nowadays than the doctrinal controversies which 
divided certain sections of the Presbyterians and Independents, 
represented by men like Belsham on the one hand, and Pye Smith 
on the other. The latter was an accomplished scholar and divine, 
and handled his argumentative weapons with success; but, with 
much knowledge as a Biblical critic, he belonged to the purely dog¬ 
matic school, and his labors have left no fruitful result. 

During the earlier part of the century higher thought of any kind, 
save in the poetry of Wordsworth, was dormant. The voice of 
Philosophy was well-nigh dead. In Edinburgh the old Scottish 
School had found its last voice in Dugald Stewart; and Carlyle tells 
us how little spiritual food of any kind he found at the University. \ 
“There was much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, 
and the like, but the hungry young looked up to their spiritual 
nurses, and for food were bidden eat the east wind .”\ Dr. Thomas 
Brown, “eloquent and full of enthusiasm about simple suggestion, 
relative, etc., was found utterly unprofitable. ” § Otherwise there 
was no breath of living movement anywhere. The most hardy 
imagination could hardly connect Bentliam, or any of his specula¬ 
tions, with religious thought. Great as he may have been in his 


* His ministry at Leicester extended from 1809 to 1826. 
t “Sartor Resartus,” B. II., c. iii. \ Ibid. 

§ “Early Life,” vol. i., p. 25. 




THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 109 

own line as a legislative and legal reformer, Bentham cannot be 
called anything more than a sciolist in religion. He had but a fee¬ 
ble grasp of the subject either speculatively or historically. 

The time was preparing, however, for a revival of higher think¬ 
ing in more quarters than one, not only within the churches but 
outside their borders. Coleridge planted his thought firmly within 
the circle of Christian ideas. His religious philosophy, revolution¬ 
ary as it was for his age, was a philosophy not only congenial to 
Christianity, but having a footing within it since the days of the 
Alexandrian School. But there were seeds of thought also grow¬ 
ing in other directions. In times of great movement religious ques¬ 
tions become pervading; they spread into the general intellectual 
atmosphere. They lay hold of a class of minds who, while repel¬ 
ling the old solutions and the ecclesiastical connections identified 
with them, are yet restlessly impelled to new solutions. They are 
unable to leave religion aside, and frequently exert a powerful in¬ 
fluence on its course of development. Such minds, if not religious 
in the ordinary sense, are full of “religiosity;” and no picture of 
the movement of religious thought would be at all complete which 
did not bring them under review. 

Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill were both pre eminently 
men of this stamp. Bred in the most diverse circumstances, they 
have exercised upon their generation a distinctive influence in great 
part of a religious character. It is not too much to say that the 
religious thinking of our time has taken a certain direction and color 
from both of a highly significant kind, well deserving attention— 
from the former, as in himself a rich and fruitful if indefinite power 
—from the latter, as the chief member of a school with a very 
definite bearing on the course of higher opinion. There is a sense 
in which both represent the negative attitude to historical religion, 
which has grown so strong in our day, but there is also a sense in 
which both, and especially Carlyle, have contributed to enlighten 
and enlarge the sphere of religious thought. So very different were 
they that it may seem absurd to class them together; yet they were 
closely related both by personal, and in some degree by intellectual 
ties. Their ideals as to religion and everything else became in the 
end essentially contradictory; but at first they were drawn together 
by common sympathies and aspirations. My aim in this lecture and 
the next will be to give some account of both, and of their religious 
opinions. I make no pretension to judge at length their general 
intellectual and literary influence. It is only as they seem to stand 
in close connection with our subject that I venture to sketch their 
character and teaching. 

There are few men of our generation, or indeed of any genera- 


110 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


tion, of whom we have a more detailed and vivid picture than we 
have of Thomas Carlyle. The only complaint is that we already 
know too much of him. Carlyle biographic literature has poured 
so copiously from the press that readers have been satiated with it. 
The great writer himself is such a master of graphic portraiture 
that all the scenes and surroundings of his childhood live before us 
as if we ourselves had lived in them. His early home at Ecclefechan; 
his father and mother, with their frugal and pious ways; the farm 
of Mainliill, where he first studied Faust in a dry ditch, are all clear 
as in a photograph. Both father and mother were “burghers” of 
the strictest type, worshipping in a humble meeting-house, having 
for minister a certain John Johnstone, from whom Carlyle learned 
his first Latin, and who was the “priestliest man” that he ever 
“beheld in any ecclesiastical guise.” Even if we allow for a touch 
of exaggeration in the picture of the “peasant union” that gathered 
in the heath-thatched house, and the simple evangelist that minis¬ 
tered to them, the picture is a beautiful one, and it left abiding 
traces in Carlyle’s memory. “On me, too,” he long afterwards 
said, “their pious heaven-sent influences rest and live.” 

Carlyle inherited the qualities of both his parents—the sturdy in¬ 
domitable promptness of his father, whose feat in taking up an 
adversary “by the two flanks and hurling him through the air” 
was notable and long remembered, and the passionate intensity and 
devotion of his mother. The race was a strong race in whom the 
fighting propensities of the Border were modified, but by no means 
extinct. The rough, vigorous fibre of the family was transmitted 
to the grandson, intellectually and morally. It is only too easy to 
see now in the extended picture of his life and manners that Car¬ 
lyle remained in much a peasant to the last. Beautiful in some as¬ 
pects of character, he lacks everywhere gentlehood. His sturdiness 
becomes too often rudeness, and his independence pure wanton self- 
assertion. In a fit of petulant fury he could bang the door upon 
Miss Welsh, who had tormented him in one of her whimsical moods 
when he offered her the homage of his affection. In the midst of 
all his love for Irving he writes both of him and his wife at times 
with a painful touch of vulgarity. It is needless to mention other 
instances of the same kind—how he professes his liking and indebt¬ 
edness to many, ladies among others, and then abuses them roundly 
on very little provocation. Nowhere does his strange, brusque in¬ 
tolerance burst out more harshly than in his letters when he first 
went to London in 1824. There may have been a good deal of 
truth in his graphic picture of the literary men he there met. There 
is certainly an infinite art in his epithets. But amusing as some 
of them are in their broad expressiveness, they are painful in their 


THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. Ill 

harshness; while their presumption can hardly be called less than 
enormous when we remember that Carlyle at this time was himself 
without any literary reputation. Surely never did a young Scots¬ 
man carry such a pair of eyes into the world of London or set such 
a peremptory mark upon its notabilities. Behind all that he says 
of Coleridge and Campbell and Hazlitt and De Quincey one in¬ 
stinctively feels that there must have been something higher and 
more deserving of respect which he failed to see. He makes no 
allowances; he does not set a single figure in any radiance of past 
achievement or explanatory necessity. It is the mere ugliness of 
the passing impression that he transfers to his pages. There is 
more than recklessness in this; there is a certain rudeness of feel¬ 
ing. And this rudeness at times was more than a lack of manner. 
It entered into his intellectual judgment and vitiated it. It made 
him emphasize characteristics opposed to his own, and convert 
mere traits of strength more or less congenial to his own character 
into virtues. When there was no play for his visual observation, 
and for the knowledge of the meaner qualities that unhappily min¬ 
gle in all men when brought within the range of personal knowl¬ 
edge, Carlyle could not only be reverent, but unduly reverent. 
Cromwell was to him a saint as well as a hero; Danton a patriot; 
Goethe a great character as well as teacher. They remained glori¬ 
fied in distance and imagination. He holds his breath over a some¬ 
what emptily complimentary letter of Goethe’s at the very time that 
he is abusing his literary contemporaries in London. Had he vis¬ 
ited the old intellectual sensualist at Weimar, and seen all his ways 
there, we should perhaps have had a very different portrait. For 
admiration with Carlyle was seldom able to withstand personal 
contact, and all imagery save that of his early home became black¬ 
ened as soon as the veil of distance was removed. 

Carlyle carried from his home a deep sense of religion. His par¬ 
ents were both devout, his father less expressively so; his mother 
showing in all her letters a deep, simple, and strong piety very beau¬ 
tiful to Carlyle and in itself. Her faith stands sure in “the Word 
of God, ” which she never fails to pray her son to read constantly. 
She entreats him “to mind his chapters.” “ Have you got through 
the Bible yet?” she asks in 1817, when he was twenty-two years of 
age and school - mastering in Kirkcaldy. “If you have, read it 
again. I hope you will not weary, and may the Lord open your 
understanding.” Again, “Oh,my dear, dear son, I would pray for 
a blessing on your learning. I beg you with all the feeling of 
an affectionate mother that you would study the Word of God.”* 


* Yol. i., p. 62. 



112 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Carlyle felt forced to excuse liimself in the same year that he “had 
not been quite regular in reading that best of Books which you rec¬ 
ommended to me.” However, he adds, “Last night I was reading 
upon my favorite Job, and I hope to do better in time to come. I 
entreat you to believe that I am sincerely desirous of being a good 
man; and though we may differ in some few unimportant particulars, 
yet I firmly trust that the same Power which created us with imper¬ 
fect faculties will pardon the errors of any one (and none are without 
them) who seek truth and righteousness with a simple heart.” His 
mother did not like the phrase “imperfect faculties,” nor perhaps 
the apologetic tone of the letter, and she says in reply, “ God made 
man after his own image, therefore he behooved to be without any 
imperfect faculties. Beware, my dear son, of such thoughts ; let 
them not dwell on your mind. God forbid. Do make religion your 
great study, Tom; if you repent it, I will bear the blame forever. ” 
This affectionate exhortation belongs to the year 1819, when Car¬ 
lyle had already abandoned his intention of entering the Church. 
This, as is well known, was his original destination, and the earnest 
desire of both his father and mother. It is remarkable too that, 
strong seceders as they were themselves from the National Church, 
the idea does not seem to have occurred to them, any more than to 
himself, of his entering the Secession ministry. After completing 
his Arts course at the Edinburgh University he entered the Divini¬ 
ty Hall there, although he never seems to have attended the classes. 
It was common at this time for divinity students to pursue their 
studies by simply enrolling themselves and appearing each session 
to deliver a discourse. It sounds strange now to hear that in this 
way Carlyle delivered an English sermon from the text, “Before I 
was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Thy word”—a “ weak, 
flowing, sentimental piece, he said, for which however he had been 
complimented “by comrades and Professor.” Afterwards he gave 
a Latin discourse on the question whether there was or was not 
such a thing as Natural Religion—possibly, we may say almost cer¬ 
tainly, from the same theme as James Mill delivered his Latin dis¬ 
course, “Num sit Dei cognitio naturalis.”* It was on this last 
occasion, when in Edinburgh in 1814, that he first met Edward Ir¬ 
ving, and had a “skirmish of tongue with him” at a friend’s rooms. 
He had indeed seen Irving before when he visited the Annan Gram¬ 
mar School, where, as half-mythically detailed in “Sartor Resar- 
tus,” Carlyle suffered much from the tyrannous savagery of his 
school-fellows. Irving, as is well known, was a native of Annan, 
distant only a few miles from Ecclefechan. 


* “ James Mill: a Biography by Dr. Alexander Bain,” p. 21. 



THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 113 


The project of entering the Church, dear as it was to the hearts 
of his parents, seems never to have been cordially entertained by 
Carlyle himself, and so it gradually drifted out of his mind. His 
more than friendly association with Irving at Kirkcaldy in the 
years 1816,1817, and 1818 had no effect in inclining him in this di¬ 
rection, or in obviating the “grave prohibitive doubts” which had 
already arisen in his mind. On the contrary, it seems to have been 
in Kirkcaldy that these doubts strengthened into a resolve to give 
up all idea of the Christian ministry. He had found Gibbon’s His¬ 
tory in Irving’s library* and eagerly devoured it with negative re¬ 
sults. Yet school-mastering was also intolerable^ to him, and so he 
found his way back to Edinburgh in 1819, to try the Law classes, 
but really to subsist by private teaching and occasional employment 
on the “Edinburgh Encyclopaedia,”given him by the editor, after¬ 
wards Sir David Brewster. 

The character of Carlyle’s doubts will appear more fully in the 
sequel. We may only remark now that there is no evidence that 
he had at this or any future time fully studied the evidences of the 
divine origin of Christianity. The very idea of such evidences was 
always repulsive to him., But there had gradually grown upon him 
the conviction that the Christianity of the Church was ‘ ‘ intellect¬ 
ually incredible,” and that he could have nothing to do with it. 
He has told us himself how he disclosed to Edward Irving the 
great change which had taken place in his mind on the subject. 

He had been to Glasgow, where Irving was then assisting Dr. 
Chalmers in the spring of 1820, and had some friendly conference 
with Chalmers, who was full, he says, of a new scheme for proving 
the truth of Christianity. “All written in us already in sympa¬ 
thetic ink; Bible awakens it, and you can read.” The fact dwelt 
in his memory, but it had not touched his heart, or brought him 
any light. The “ sympathetic ink ” in his case would not take effect. 
And when the time came for his return to Annandale, he describes 
how Irving accompanied him fifteen miles of the road, and how 
they sat among the “peat hags” of Drumclog moss, “under the 
silent bright skies,” with “a world all silent around them.” As 
they sat and talked, their own voices were “the one sound.” Ail- 
sa Craig towered “ white and visible ” away in the distance. Their 
talk had grown ever friendlier and more interesting. At length 
the declining sun said plainly, You must part. “We sauntered,” 
he says, “slowly into the'highway. Masons were building at a 
wayside cottage near by, or were packing up on ceasing for the day. 
We leaned our backs on a dry stone fence, and looking into the 


* “ Early Life,’*’ vol. i., p. 52. 
8 




114 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


western radiance, continued to talk yet awhile, loath both of us to 
go. It was just here, as the sun was sinking, Irving actually drew 
from me by degrees in the softest manner the confession that I did 
not think as he of the Christian religion, and that it was vain for 
me to expect I ever could or should. This, if this was so, he had 
pre-engaged to take well from me; like an elder brother if I would 
be frank with him, and right royally he did so, and to the end of 
his life we needed no concealments on that head, which was really 
a step gained.” 

For a time—apparently not more than two years—Carlyle’s state 
of mind was one of great unhappiness, in which the foundations 
not only of Christianity, but of all natural religion, seemed shaken 
within him. “Doubt darkened into unbelief,” “shade over shade,” 
until there was nothing hut “the fixed starless Tartarean dark.” 
He was very miserable, and he cried out in his misery, “Is there 
no God then? Has the word Duty no meaning? Is what we call 
duty no Divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly phantasm, 
made up of desire and fear?” But even in his worst darkness the 
ideas of God and of Duty survived, in a fluctuating way, in his mind. 
The language which he used in his letters during the same period 
both to his father and mother leaves this beyond doubt. It was 
his constant assurance to his mother, that his opinions, although 
clothed in a different garb, were at bottom analogous with her own. 
There were times no doubt when he felt differently, and seemed to 
lose hold of all truth. There was a deeper despair—and then some 
lightening of the clouds before true light and peace came. It was 
not, we shall see, till 1826, after his first return from London, that 
he was able, in his own language, “authentically to take the devil 
by the nose.” 

He has himself described in mystical guise in “ Sartor Resartus ” the 
beginning of his spiritual deliverance. The incident is told in the 
close of the seventh chapter of Book II., and he says it literally oc¬ 
curred to himself—only we have to substitute Leith Walk for the 
Rue Saint-Thomas de l’Enfer. It was during the summer of 1821, 
after three weeks of total sleeplessness, in which his one solace was 
that of a daily bathe on the sands between Leith and Portobello. 
Long afterwards he said he could go straight to the place. The in¬ 
cident happened as he went down to bathe. As he went on his 
way in gloomy meditation, “all things in the heavens above and 
the earth beneath” seemed “to hurt” him. The day was intoler¬ 
ably sultry, and the pavement “ hot as Nebuchadnezzar’s Furnace.” 
Suddenly the thought came to him, “ ‘What art thou afraid of ? 
Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and 
go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum- 


THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 115 


total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, death; and 
say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, 
will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not 
suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though out¬ 
cast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? 
Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it. ’ And as I so thought, 
there rushed lik£ a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook 
base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown 
strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time the temper 
of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow was it but 
Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance. . . . Then it was that my 
whole me stood up, in native God-created majesty. . . . The Ever¬ 
lasting No had said, * Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the 
Universe is mine (the Devil’s);’ to which my whole me now made 
answer, ‘ I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee. ’ From 
this hour I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth.” 

There is no more significant passage in all Carlyle’s writings. It 
was written long after the event—nearly ten years—but it expresses 
beyond doubt a great change in his mode of thought. His fears 
and doubts were henceforth cast behind him, and a clear light of 
spiritual conviction began to dawn within him. His full deliverance 
was not yet, but the incident in Leith Walk was its beginning. Five 
years afterwards the consummation came during a happy summer 
that he spent in a cottage of his own, not far from his father’s farm. 
There he succeeded in chaining up finally the spiritual “dragons” 
that had tormented him, and attaining to what he called his conver¬ 
sion. It was nothing less in his view. “ I found it,” he says,“to 
be essentially what Methodist people call their conversion—the de¬ 
liverance of their souls from the devil and the pit. Precisely that 
in a new form. And there burned, accordingly, a sacred flame of 
joy in me, silent in my inmost being, as of one henceforth superior 
to fate. This ‘holy joy’ lasted sensibly in me for several years, in 
blessed counterpoise to sufferings and discouragements enough; nor 
has it proved what I can call fallacious at any time since.” 

It is difficult to know how far Carlyle’s language here and in many 
places is to be taken literally, especially when speaking of himself. 
No Methodist, not even John Bunyan, clothes his spiritual experi¬ 
ences in more highly metaphorical phrase. His imagination bodies 
forth his sufferings, more rarely his joys, in figures of intensity and 
magnitude altogether disproportionate to the experience of ordinary 
men. The transformation of Leith Walk, in all its prosaic ugliness, 
into the Rue de l’Enfer is merely one among many instances of 
this power of imaginative exaggeration. “ Dragons ” and “ Tophet,” 
“Eternities,” “ Silences,” “Immensities” are the familiar imagery of 


116 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


his mind. He sees everything transfigured in a halo of gloom or 
of sunshine. The truth seems to be that on this occasion peace of 
mind came to him largely from a temporary access of health. The 
summer of 1826, spent in his own cottage on Hoddam Hill, with his 
mother at command to attend to his wants, and set free from the 
distractions of the paternal farm, seems almost to have been the 
happiest portion of his life. He had room; he liadhvork—the trans¬ 
lation of German romance, which cost him little trouble and brought 
in some money. The view from his cottage over the Solway Firth 
was unrivalled in extent and grandeur. No other residence seems 
to have suited him so well, and it was one of the misfortunes of his 
life that he was unable to retain it. There was freedom, occupation, 
a wild Irish pony on which to gallop, and roads, “smooth and hard,” 
to his taste; “ample space to dig and prune under the pure canopy 
of a wholesome sky.” It was here Miss Welsh visited his mother, 
and may be said to have definitely sealed her fate. The story of her 
visit and all that followed is beautifully told. He grew for a time 
strong in health in the midst of such inspirations, with simple food 
and quiet, restful nights. This was the true explanation of his spir¬ 
itual triumph, of his taking the devil so effectually by the nose at 
this time. These years, he tells us, lay in his memory as a “ russet- 
coated idyl; one of the quietest, on the whole, and perhaps the most 
triumphantly important of my life. I lived very silent, diligent, 
had long solitary rides on my wild Irish horse, Larry; good for the 
dietetic part. My meditatings, musings, and reflections were con¬ 
tinual ; my thoughts went wandering or travelling through eternity, 
and were now, to my infinite solacement, coming back with tidings 
to me. This year I found I had conquered all my scepticisms, ago¬ 
nizing doubts, fearful wrestlings with the foul, vile, and soul-mad¬ 
dening Mud-Gods of my Epoch—had escaped as from a worse than 
Tartarus, with all its Phlegethons and Stygian quagmires, and was 
emerging free in spirit into the eternal blue of Ether.”* 

Had Carlyle only been able to dwell on the top of Hoddam Hill 
with some fair portion of this world’s goods, and his strong peasant 
mother, who knew all his ways, to minister to his wants, instead of 
the delicate lady whom he made his wife, we might have heard less 
of “dragons” and “Stygian quagmires.” As it was, the spiritual 
happiness of this year so far remained with him. Ever since, he 
says, he had dwelt comparatively in the clear heaven, looking down 
upon the “ welterings” of his poor fellow-creatures below, and hav¬ 
ing no concern in “their Puseyisms, ritualisms, metaphysical contro¬ 
versies, and cobwebberies — no feeling of my own, except honest 


* “Reminiscences,” vol. i., p. 286, 



THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 117 

silent pity for the serious or religious part of them, and occasional 
indignation for the world’s sake at the frivolous, secular, and impi¬ 
ous part, with their universal suffrages, their nigger Emancipations, 
sluggard and scoundrel protection societies, and unexampled pros¬ 
perities for the time being. What my pious joy and gratitude then 
was let the pious soul figure. ... I had in effect gained an immense 
victory, and for a number of years, in spite of nerves and chagrins, 
had a constant inward happiness that was quite royal and supreme. 
. . . Once more, thank Heaven for its highest gift. I then felt, and 
still feel endlessly indebted to Goethe in the business. . . . Nowhere 
can I recollect of myself such pious musings, communings, silent 
and spontaneous with fact and nature, as in these poor Annandale 
localities. The sound of the kirk bell once or twice on Sunday morn¬ 
ings (from Hoddam Kirk, about a mile on the plains below me) was 
strangely touching, like the departing voice of eighteen centuries. ” * 

This is a charming picture; and it is interesting to note the date 
of this new-birth time of spiritual life in Carlyle. It is a date, as 
we have seen already, fertile in religious thought. At centres wide 
apart, and tending to very different issues, the Divine impulse was 
moving many minds in those years — Coleridge, Arnold, Milman, 
Thirlwall, Newman, Erskine, Macleod Campbell. The higher vis¬ 
ions of Truth that then came to Carlyle were to himself certainly of 
the nature of Divine inspiration; and the creative moments were ever 
afterwards among the brightest of his existence. His better health 
concurred with the inspirations of the year, and was a more impor¬ 
tant factor in the result than he himself realized; but the time was 
also big with spiritual excitement, and the Divine afflatus came to 
him, as to others, amid his silent wanderings and communings with 
nature. 

This year—1826—with its “rustic dignity and beauty,” passed for 
Carlyle too rapidly away. He was back at his father’s house at 
Mainhill before it was out. Nay, before the last month of autumn 
was yet finished, he was married—after no end of negotiation—and 
settled at Comely Bank; and then, two years later, he was at Craig- 
enputtock, “the dreariest spot in all the British dominions.” His 
life there—his disappointments, and weary work at article-writing, 
his encouraging letters from Goethe, and his composition of “ Sar¬ 
tor Resartus”—are all written in Mr. Froude’s volumes. With 
“Sartor Resartus ”Carlyle’s message to the world may be said to 
have begun. It was composed at Craigenputtock in 1831, given to 
the world in Fraser's Magazine in 1833, but not published separately 
till 1838. The story of his attempts to find a publisher, his inter- 


* “Reminiscences,” vol. i., p. 286. 




118 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


views with Mr. Murray and Messrs. Longman, make a series of piti¬ 
ful adventures, all very pathetic. We cannot wonder at the diffi¬ 
culties he encountered, for the world has ever been slow to recognize 
new prophets, and Carlyle assumed in Sartor the role of a prophet. 
It was written with his heart’s blood—a wild and solemn sorrow 
“running through its sentences like the sound over the strings of 
an HSolian harp.” In this book, too, for the first time, he assumed 
his characteristic style. The new message seemed to demand a new 
language; and Teufelsdrockh poured forth his wailings and his as¬ 
pirations in words that caused the ears to tingle, if not exactly iq 
the sense Carlyle meant. 

Carlyle’s style, it is needless to say, has been much criticised. To 
writers like Macaulay and Jeffrey it was intolerable; and Jeffrey 
did not hesitate to bid him “fling away his affectations, and write 
like his famous countrymen of all ages.” A strange, and we think 
erroneous, suggestion lias been made recently that he adopted “a 
studied and ambiguous phraseology ” with a view to conceal opin¬ 
ions which would have been fatal to his success as a writer. The 
public, it is said, “put their own interpretation on his mystical 
utterances, and gave him the benefit of any doubts.” Not only is 
there no evidence of such an intention in Carlyle, but in point of 
fact his peculiar style, instead of in any degree helping the circula¬ 
tion of his opinions, undoubtedly retarded it. Carlyle, moreover, 
was so far from having any such object in view that his style is no¬ 
where so obscure and mystical as in fragments written for his own 
eyes alone. The truth plainly is, that Carlyle’s style was partly 
modelled on that of Jean Paul Richter, among his favorite stud¬ 
ies at this time,* and partly a natural growth of his mind as he 
wrestled with the problems of the universe, and fought himself free 
from the dragons and the dismal abysses of Tartarus. It is only 
when he takes up his prophetic message that he fully dons, so to 
speak, the prophet’s mantle. His translations of the “Wilhelm 
Meister,” and his “Life of Schiller,” were written mainly in the 
current style of his time, and even his article on Burns, in 1828, 
is comparatively simple in style, although Jeffrey objected to its 
diffuseness and length for the Edinburgh Review. Carlyle was not 
the man, either privately or as a writer, to mask his opinions in a 
feigned style, or to deliberately design to mystify his readers. The 
mystification, if any, lies in the character of the message, as well as 
in the language in which it is conveyed. . 


* His famous study of Jean Paul in the Foreign Review belongs to 1830. 
He had previously written on the same subject in the Edinburqh Reviev> 
iu 1827. 





THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 119 

The twenty years or so that followed the publication of ‘ ‘ Sartor 
Resartus” mark the era of Carlyle’s chief influence. He was, of 
course, a great name long after this. But his prophetic phase cul¬ 
minated with the “Life of Sterling” in 1851. From this time peo¬ 
ple ceased to look to him as a religious teacher. He passed into the 
literary patriarch—the ; great Father of contemporary letters, under 
which aspect an increasing veneration gathered around his name, 
receiving, perhaps, its most memorable expression in the Edinburgh 
Rectorship of 1866, and the enthusiastic welcome which was then 
given him by the students and public. He was at this time seventy- 
one years of age, a truly venerable figure, bearing in his worn and 
sad, yet heroic, face the impress of all the struggles he had gone 
through. And as he appeared surrounded with many new and some 
old faces—among the latter that of his friend Mr. Erskine from 
Linlathen, like himself a striking figure in his old age—the sight 
was both a grand and touching one. Many warmed to the “heart- 
worn ” old man as they listened with beating hearts to his words but 
faintly caught at times, and heard from his own lips the lessons of 
his life.* “ There was not a word in his speech,” Mr. Froude sayj, 
“which he had not already said, and said far more forcibly, a hun¬ 
dred times. But suddenly and thenceforward, till his death set 
them off again, hostile tongues ceased to speak against him as hos¬ 
tile pens to write. The speech was printed in full in half of the news¬ 
papers in the island. It was received with universal acclamation. 
A low-priced edition of his works became in demand, and they flew 
into a strange temporary popularity with the reading multitude. 
“ Sartor,” “poor beast,” had struggled into life with difficulty, and 

* I may be pardoned for mentioning here that I happened to be the 
first to convey to Mrs. Carlyle the personal assurance of the splendid re¬ 
ception which her husband received on this occasion. I left Edinburgh 
on the evening of Mr. Carlyle’s address on a visit, to Mrs. Oliphant, at 
Windsor, where I found Mrs. Carlyle among Mrs. Oliphant’s visitors. I 
had some acquaintance before both with her and her illustrious husband. 
She was of course greatly interested in what I was able to tell her about 
the enthusiasm with which the students had received Mr. Carlyle; and 
made us all (Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Tulloch, and myself) promise to visit 
her a few days later at Clieyne Row to meet Mr. Froude, as mentioned by 
him in his concluding volume, p. 34. In fulfilment of our engagement 
we were on our way to Cheyne Row when we observed Mr. Froude run 
hastily along the street in the direction of Mr. Carlyle’s house; and we 
then learned for the first time the sad news of Mrs. Carlyle’s sudden 
death. It was a terrible shock to all, and the incident remains engraven 
on one’s memory. She had been bright beyond measure at Windsor, 
elated by her husband’s triumph—dealing wittily but kindly with many 
things, and glancing with playful sallies at Carlyle himself and his ways. 




120 MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

its readers since had been few, if select. Twenty thousand copies of 
the shilling edition were now sold instantly on its publication. It 
was now admitted universally that Carlyle was a “great man.” Yet 
he saw no inclination, not the slightest, to attend to his teaching. 
He himself could not make it out, but the explanation is not far to 
seek. The Edinburgh Address contained his doctrines, with the fire 
which had provoked the animosity taken out of them. They were 
reduced to the level of Church sermons; thrown into general prop¬ 
ositions which it is pretty and right and becoming to confess with 
our lips, while no one is supposed to act on them. We admire and 
praise the beautiful language, and we reward the performance with 
a bishopric if the speaker be a clergyman. Carlyle, people felt with 
a sense of relief, meant only what the preachers meant, and was a 
fine fellow after all.”* 

So far Mr. Froude. The cynical allusions are after his manner, 
and need not concern us. The truth is that there now happened 
to Carlyle what more or less falls to all writers of distinction. His 
name, as the favorite of the Edinburgh students, was for the time 
“up.” It drew a wide-spread general attention, and his writings in¬ 
evitably grew in temporary popularity with his name. But Carlyle, 
we fancy, was too wise a man to concern himself much with such a 
result. He could not well have imagined that a popularity of this 
kind was likely to extend the real influence of his teaching, which 
had reached its height some time before. The freshness of his doc¬ 
trines was past. The generation which had been deeply moved by 
“ Sartor Resartus,” and the lectures on “ Heroes and Hero Worship,” 
was growing to maturity. The ‘ ‘ Life of Sterling, ” with all its beau¬ 
ty and interest as a composition, had repelled many—and rightly so. 
It was felt to be offensive to the Churches and to doctrines indepen¬ 
dent of all Churches, and to reveal a bitterness which is never near to 
wisdom. The Edinburgh enthusiasm was a tribute to the man of 
letters rather than to the prophet of any doctrine whatever. And 
it was all the truer and higher tribute on this account. Carlyle will 
be remembered in literature when his “philosophy of clothes,” and 
all his philosophy, is forgotten. 

But let us now try to estimate his position as a thinker. What 
were those ‘ ‘ doctrines ” of which Mr. Froude speaks, or, in other 
words, the “message” which the prophet himself thought he bore 
to his generation? There are two ways in which we may consider 
this question. First of all we may ask what was the general influ¬ 
ence of Carlyle as a writer, and then what, so far as we can make 
out, were the contents of his “message,” or the principles of convic- 


* Froude, vol. ii. (“ Carlyle’s Later Life”), pp. 306-7. 




THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 121 

tion underlying all his teaching? The two questions are closely 
connected, and indeed hardly separable. But it will be convenient 
to look at them in succession. 

1. Carlyle spoke with two different voices about literature. As a 
profession he held it in contempt. He has no words too hard for 
the poor literary man, in London or elsewhere. “ Good Heavens,” 
he says, “and is this the literary world—this rascal rout, the dirty 
rabble, destitute not only of large feeling and knowledge or intellect, 
but even of common honesty! They are not red-blooded men at all. 
They are only things for writing articles.” But at other times he 
spoke of literature with divine enthusiasm. The writer of a true 
book was the real “ Primate of England, and of all England.” “Lit¬ 
erature, so far as it is literature, is an Apocalypse of Nature. The 
dark, scornful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, 
ipay bear touches of the god-like; nay the withered mockery of a 
French Sceptic — his mockery of the false alone, and worship of 
the true; how much more the sphere harmony of a Shakespeare and 
a Goethe; the cathedral music of a Milton ; the humble genuine 
lark-notes of a Burns—skylark starting from the humble furrow far 
overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there. ” 
Even writers of newspapers, more frequently objects of his scorn, 
are sometimes spoken of as “the real working effective Church of 
a modern country.” 

The world’s final judgment upon Carlyle, we feel certain, will be 
that he was himself above all a man of letters. He had the graphic 
faculty more than any other. He could not help putting pen to 
paper. The “pictured page” came forth from him naturally, and 
grew under his hand irresistibly—yet always under the impulse of a 
high ideal. This is the explanation of the different ways in which 
he speaks—or at least it is the chief explanation—for no doubt also 
mere mood sometimes swayed him. Literature was to him “the 
wine of life.” It should not be converted “into daily food.” Above 
all, it must not be confounded with the “froth ocean of printed 
speech, which we loosely call literature.” This must be said for 
Carlyle—no less than for Milton—that he never ceased to claim a 
high ideal for literature, and to vindicate for its theme “ whatsoever 
in religion is holy and sublime, and in virtue amiable and grave.” 

In this respect Carlyle’s influence has been good without excep¬ 
tion. It brought an element of thoroughness, of depth and reality, 
into the literary thought of his time which was of great value. It 
did so in more ways than one. His own writings were all more or 
less penetrating and earnest. He took up subjects from the inside 
with a view to their vital comprehension in their essential and not 
merely their ordinary meaning. His papers on Burns, on Jean Paul, 


122 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


on Voltaire, on Novalis, on Samuel Johnson, as weir as on Goethe 
and others, were all of this kind. His famous article on “ Charac¬ 
teristics,” “more profound and far-reaching even than ‘Sartor’ it¬ 
self,” and his previous article on the “Signs of the Times”—both 
in the Edinburgh Review,* were also of the same stamp. His style 
of work is better illustrated by such examples, because they do not 
raise so directly the question of the principles underlying his gen¬ 
eral works. These principles may be disputed; but no one can well 
dispute that the themes handled by Carlyle in these miscellanies 
were handled with a soul which was new in the literature of our 
century. Thoughtful readers were arrested and made to feel that 
they were brought face to face with spiritual facts, with the realities 
of life and thought, as in no other writings of the day. This was 
of the nature of religious influence—more truly so than much that 
professed to be religion. It tended to deepen thought, to cleanse the 
spiritual eye, to go down to the roots of questions and bring their 
complexities into some organic shape. Imperfectly as the writer 
was still understood in his earlier years, he exercised so far a vast 
influence, and of the best kind. The “mysticism” of which he 
speaks in his letters of this time was a quickening power to all open¬ 
ing minds. One can see how it attracted John Stuart Mill when 
Carlyle visited London, in 1831, with a view to the publication of 
“ Sartor.” Different as was their point of view, and widely as they 
afterwards separated, Mill was then strongly drawn to Carlyle, as 
Carlyle was drawn to him. He tells us how “ the enthusiastic yet 
lucid, calm youth ” walked home with him the. first time they met,f 
and seemed as if he had been “converted by the head of the mystic 
school.” Carlyle indeed soon discovered that he had not found 
“another mystic” in Mill, but his startling intuition, his intellectual 
downrightness, and clear, strong grasp of realities made an obviously 
great impression upon the young “Spirit of the age,as Carlyle 
called him. The same power was felt by others even thus early, 
although it was ten years afterwards till his full influence began to 
tell. And the influence thus exercised was largely independent of 
his special doctrines. Whether these doctrines were true or not, it 
was plain that here was a mind of rare force—of stern truthfulness 
—to which it would do well for the world to take heed. And the 
result was undoubtedly to lift many questions not only of literature 
and history, but of social, moral, political, and religious importance 
into a higher atmosphere, and invest them with a higher meaning 
than heretofore. 


* “Signs of the Times,” 1829; “ Characteristics,” 1831. 
t September, 1831. 

X The title of a series of articles by Mill in 183L 





THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 123 


But it was not only by the tone and spirit of his own writings 
that Carlyle accomplished this result. He was the first who brought 
home to the British mind the great storehouse of higher thought 
that existed in the literature of Germany. Attempts had been made 
in the same direction by Taylor of Norwich in his ‘ ‘ Translations ” and 
his “ Survey of German Poetry,” which is now however chiefly re¬ 
membered from Carlyle’s review, by Sir Walter Scott, and by Cole¬ 
ridge ; but it cannot be said that the treasures of German poetry or 
reflective fiction were really known in this country before Carlyle’s 
“Life of Schiller” and his translation of “Wilhelm Meister,” and 
his articles on Richter and Goethe. To what extent Carlyle bor¬ 
rowed his own so-called “mysticism” from Germany need not be 
considered. He professed himself, as all know, endlessly indebted 
to Goethe. But there can be no question of the extent to which 
his own mind was stimulated and enriched by Germanism. Cole¬ 
ridge had drawn wealth from the same source, chiefly from the 
German philosophical writers, which had no particular attraction 
for Carlyle, notwithstanding the paper on Novalis; but it cannot be 
said that anything that Coleridge had done in this way had spread 
the knowledge of German thought and literature. Carlyle for the 
first time made us alive to the power, beauty, and genuine depth of 
meaning there were in the great German poets and writers, their 
freer and richer views of life, their higher and more comprehensive 
canons of criticism. In this knowledge too there was an element 
of religion. Religious aspiration was seen to rest on a wider basis 
than our insular narrowness had been accustomed to place it. It 
was acknowledged as a powerful element in all life—in art, in spec¬ 
ulation, in every intellectual growth. “In all human hearts there 
is the religious fibre,”* was the lesson which Carlyle had learned 
himself and preached to others. No human product, and least of 
all literature, can be divorced from religion. This was a higher 
and better view of literature than had prevailed during the eigh¬ 
teenth and the early part of the nineteenth century. It is liable no 
doubt to abuse. It may be turned by literary libertinism into an 
assertion that any kind of religion is good enough—that mere senti¬ 
mentalism may stand for religion. But the thought in itself is true 
and valuable, and not to be measured by its abuse. It both elevates 
humanity and enlarges religion. It claims all intellectual activity 
as rightfully belonging to God and not to the devil, and casts over 


* Always and everywhere this remains a true saying—“II y a dans le 
coeur humain un fibre religieux.” Man always worships something. Al¬ 
ways he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite.—“Review 
of Goethe’s Works—Miscellanies,” vol. iii. 



124 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


it a sacred lustre. It brings man as man within the light of the 
Divine, and shows him in his truly supernatural life—“ An infinite 
happiness and an infinite woe not only waiting him hereafter, but 
looking out upon him through every pitifullest present good or evil.* 
This deeper way of looking at human nature with all its products, 
liable to loose and feeble exaggeration as it may be, was a real gain 
to the higher thought of the time. It was a true advancement of 
literature. It vindicated a wider sphere for religion. It failed to 
arrest the progress of the mechanical philosophy against which it 
was chiefly directed; but it still operates as a pregnant force in 
British thinking. 

But we must consider Carlyle’s religious attitude more particular¬ 
ly. What were his own special doctrines? 

Mr. Froude speaks repeatedly of Carlyle’s “Creed,” and of the 
effect it exercised upon himself and his contemporaries in the agi¬ 
tating years in which Puseyism had outrun itself, and evangelical¬ 
ism as a power was well-nigh extinct. These were the years in 
which Mr. Froude himself began life as an author, and along with 
other young souls was “determined to have done with insincerity, 
to find ground under their feet, to let the uncertain remain uncer¬ 
tain, but to learn how much and what we could honestly regard as 
true.” Tennyson “became the voice of this feeling in poetry.” 
Carlyle stood beside the poet'as a prophet and teacher, and his words 
were “like the morning reveille” to the new searchers after truth. 

‘ ‘ They had been taught to believe in a living God. They heard of 
what he had done in the past. Carlyle was the first to make us see 
his actual and active presence now in this working world. To 
know God’s existence was not an arguable probability, a fact de¬ 
pendent. for its certainty on Church authority or on apostolic succes¬ 
sion, or on so-called histories, which might possibly prove to be no 
more than legends; but an awful reality to which the fate—the fate 
of each individual man bore perpetual witness. Here, and only 
here, lay the sanction and the meaning of the word duty. We were 
to do our work because we were bound to do it by our Master’s 
orders. We were to be just and true because God abhorred wrong 
and hated lies. Religious teachers, indeed, had said the same thing, 
but they had so stifled the practical bearing of their creed under 
their doctrines and traditions that honest men had found a difficulty 
in listening to them. In Carlyle’s writings dogma and tradition had 
melted like a mist, and the awful, actual fact burnt clear once more 
in the midst of heaven.” As for himself, Froude adds that he was 
saved by Carlyle’s writings “ from Positivism or Romanism or Athe- 


* “Review of Goethe’s Works—Miscellanies,” vol. iii. 



THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 125 

ism. The alternatives were being thrust upon us of believing noth¬ 
ing or believing everything, or worse still, of acquiescing for worldly 
convenience in the established order of things which had been made 
intellectually incredible. Carlyle taught me a creed which I could 
then accept as really true; which I have held ever since with in¬ 
creasing confidence as the interpretation of my existence, and the 
guide of my conduct so far as I have been able to act up to it. 
Then and always I looked and have looked to him as my master.”* 

We need say nothing of the assumption underlying this passage 
that sincerity was a supreme if not exclusive note of the hand of 
young truth-seekers who in those years (1842-44) had broken loose 
from traditionary and historical religion, and could find no rest in 
any existing form of Christianity. The talk of sincerity is too much 
in the mouth both of the prophet and his disciple. It is an evil 
weapon, and may be turned with too great facility many ways. We 
know after all but little in any case—sometimes even in our own 
case — of the real motives and state of mind underlying religious 
belief or unbelief. And it is the wiser as well as the humbler course 
to credit each other with sincerity, save when conduct and belief 
are in too glaring contrast. There may be a cant about sincerity, 
as about other things, and it comes near to being this when used 
thus recklessly. 

Of Carlyle’s deep sincerity there can be no question. When he 
told Irving, under the “western radiance” on Drumclog Moor, that 
he had ceased to think of the Christian religion as his friend did, he 
was evidently moved by the irresistible honesty of his nature. Then, 
and ever afterwards, he found himself unable to believe in Revela¬ 
tion, “technically so called”—a revelation, that is to say, supposed 
to be established by historical miracles. The fullest expression of 
his disbelief in Christianity is to be found in his “ Life of Sterling;” 
but Mr. Froude has published an interesting fragment in the open¬ 
ing of the second of his earlier volumes on Carlyle’s Life, bearing 
on the same subject, f In this fragment he explains, in character¬ 
istic fashion, his views of all historical religions as being in their 
day loyal efforts, according to the light of their time, to explain the 
problem of the Universe, and the reality of human duty—efforts, 
however, in their very nature, neither exhaustive nor permanent. 
For a time they seem to fill the whole orbit of spiritual vision, and 
all things to move in harmony with their contents. But the Uni¬ 
verse itself is greater than any theory that can be formed about it. 
It was natural for the Jewish people to fancy that ‘ ‘ the set of com 


* “Later Life,” vol. i., p. 291 et seq. 
t “ Spiritual Optics, vol. fi., p. 8 et seq. 



126 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


victions ” which they had worked out for themselves were of uni¬ 
versal import, and that the world was revolving round them, while 
they were motionless, as a centre. But in their case, as in others, 
the story of Galileo and the heavens applies—they were really in 
motion, while the world in its divine beauty was still and peaceful 
around them. They, no more than others, have read all its meaning, 
or fixed it forever. The Universe itself, and man as its prime figure, 
form the true Revelation. Religion cannot be incarnated and set¬ 
tled once for all in forms of Creed and worship. It is a continual 
growth in eveiy living heart—a new light to every seeing eye. Past 
theologies did their best to interpret the laws under which man was 
living, and to help him to regulate his life thereby. But the laws 
of God are before us always, whether promulgated in Sinai Thun¬ 
der or otherwise. “The Universe is made by law—the great Soul 
of the world is just, and not unjust. . . . Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, 
Sinai Thunder, I know more or less the history of those—the rise, 
progress, decline, and fall of these. Can thunder from the thirty- 
two Azimuths, repeated daily for centuries of years, make God’s 
laws more godlike to me? Brother, No! . . . Revelation, Inspiration, 
yes, and thy own God-created soul: dost thou not call that a Reve¬ 
lation? Who made thee? Where didst thou come from?—the voice 
of Eternity, if thou be not a blasphemer, and poor asphyxied mute, 
speaks with that tongue of thine. Thou art the latest book of 
Nature; it is the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth thee under¬ 
standing, my brother, my brother.”* Again, “God not only made 
us, and beholds us, but is in us and around us. The age of mira¬ 
cles, as it ever was, now is. . . . This is the high Gospel begun to be 
preached: Man is still man!”f 

It is evident that Carlyle’s repulsion to Christianity arose out of 
the general tendency of his mind to throw aside all dead forms of 
thought, as he conceived them to be. With a creative imagination, 
unexampled almost in the history of literature, his highest gift was 
yet strangely limited. He could make the dead live again in feat¬ 
ure and character—every aspect of life, society, and manner glow 
upon the canvas in a way no writer of our time, or perhaps of any 
time, ever rivalled. Lockhart said that he excelled every one in 
this respect except Scott. Mr. Froude, and many will agree with 
him, will not allow the exception. But with all this intense imag¬ 
inative realism in the description of facts — in the portraiture of 
character and events—he hq^d little or no power of realizing sys¬ 
tems of thought, and recognizing what is great and still living in 


* “ Past and Present,” pp. 307-9. 
t “Characteristics—Miscellanies,” iii.,p. 32. 



THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 127 

them. Philosophies and theologies, merely because they are past, 
are all dead metaphysics—putrescent stuff—to be cast out and trod¬ 
den underfoot. Any manifestation of forceful life — of energetic 
personality—in the past, as in the present, interested him—Luther, 
Knox, Mohammed, Samuel Johnson, Burns, Edward Irving, so far; 
but movements of thought, apart from the personalities concerned 
in them—movements which, after their first life, had clothed them¬ 
selves in systems and institutions, he nowhere shows a capacity of un¬ 
derstanding, still less of estimating in their surviving life and power, as 
embodied in Institutions, Churches, articles, Liturgies, or other sym¬ 
bols. The mere fact that they were no longer in their first fresh¬ 
ness, but had become traditional, implied to him that they were 
dead, and that there was no more good in them. With all his his¬ 
toric vision, so intense of its kind, there is no evidence that he ever 
saw what a marvellous and exceptional movement Christianity had 
been—what life still stirred in it—what an historical as well as spir¬ 
itual grandeur there was in the Church—and the witness it still was 
for a living God in the world. He could not accept its miraculous 
frame-work; but neither could he accept its inner spirit. He was 
too obviously repelled by the essential character of its teaching as a 
Gospel for the poor, weak, and sinful. He was blind, with all his 
heroic instincts, to the most heroic history that has ever been enact¬ 
ed in the world. Calvinism was to him respectable, not because it 
was a great intellectual or theological phenomenon, with a continu¬ 
ous historical life of its own, but because it was the faith of his 
father and mother, and he saw how it had moved them with the 
strong hand of its purity, and given their lives a certain grandeur 
and stern kind of beauty. When he talks of “ unbelievability,” 
and the impossibility of any man of veracity taking up with tra¬ 
ditional Christianity, it is necessary not merely to say that he never 
gave the subject of its credibility any adequate attention, but that 
he failed to understand its simple greatness as a fact, or rather a 
great procession of facts—the power of its thought in moulding hu¬ 
man life all through the Christian centuries—the stamp of tender 
heroism which it alone still gives to this life. He failed, in short, 
on this side, as a student of that very human nature which in its 
essential elements was to him professedly Revelation, to the exclu¬ 
sion of the dead theologies which hung around it. 

But opposed as Carlyle was thus to Christianity, he was still more 
opposed to Materialism in all its forms. This is evident enough in 
his writings, vague as they often are, but Mr. Froude’s statements 
place the matter beyond all doubt. The} r have a special value as 
professing to be founded on much personal converse with him dur¬ 
ing his last years, when his thought was fully matured in the light 


128 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


of the successive efforts made in our time to account for man’s nat 
ure by materialistic evolution. All such efforts were to him mere 
“mud philosophies.” “God was to him the fact of facts.” Again, 
his biographer says Carlyle “was a Calvinist without the theology. 
The materialistic theory of things—that intellect is a phenomenon 
of matter, that conscience is the. growth of social convenience, and 
other kindred speculations, he utterly repudiated. Scepticism on 
the nature of right and wrong, or on man’s responsibility to his 
Maker, never touched or tempted him.”* He discredited Christi¬ 
anity as a professed revelation; but he not only never doubted the 
Divine Government of the world—it may be said that all his writ¬ 
ings, historical, political, and biographical, appealed incessantly to 
this Government as the surest reality in the Universe. Opposition 
to it and to the plain facts everywhere witnessing to it, was the 
explanation of all personal, social, and political corruption. It was 
even because in his view religion, as represented by the Churches, 
had so much lost sight of the inexorable Moral law" lying upon all 
human life, that it had lost so much of its power, and had become 
dead and useless as he supposed. There was never a sterner Apos¬ 
tle of Divine Law than Carlyle, or any one more opposed to the 
idea of a Godless world in which man was his own chief end. 

But strongly as Carlyle seized the divine side of things, clearly as 
he recognized that there is a spirit in man, and that the Almighty 
alone giveth him understanding, he refused to look steadily at spir¬ 
itual as distinct from natural life. There is a lack both of reality 
and discrimination in his conception. His dualism of spirit and 
matter, much insisted upon in general terms, and in opposition to 
all “mud philosophies,” had a constant tendency to vanish on ap¬ 
plication. Nature and man were divine to him now and here. 
Nothing is more touching and beautiful than the way in which he 
vindicates the divine meaning of all nature, the simple streamlet or 
Kuhbach that ran by the home of his childhood, ‘ * flowing, gurgling 
from beyond the earliest date of History,” no less than the Jordan 
or Siloa of Scripture; the lives that were dear to his heart no less 
than the lives of Patriarchs or Apostles. All in idea were sacred— 
a Revelation to him. But the Divine in Nature and in Man—all¬ 
significant in Carlyle’s imagination — was but imperfectly appre¬ 
hended by him in particular fact. Here as everywhere to him the 
ideal and the actual failed to harmonize. Nature was before his 
eyes at Craigenputtock no less than Hoddam Hill; yet the former 
was a God-forgotten wilderness—“a devil’s den” when he was out 
of humor. “Man was still man”—Godlike—but man the individ- 


* “Life,” vol. ii., p. 2 (years 1795-1835). 



THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 


129 


ual, save in rare instances, was intolerable to him. No one has ever 
written more eloquently of man in the universal, and abused more 
dreadfully the individuals with whom he was brought in contact. 

There is not only this gap between the ideal and the practical; 
but with all Carlyle’s talk of God—of the Divine—he everywhere 
shrinks from any definition of God as distinctively moral. There 
is everywhere to him a Divine meaning. But what does this come 
to? “Matter, were it never so despicable, is the manifestation of 
spirit.” But what is spirit? What is the Divine that moves in all 
things—“all thinking things, all objects of all thought?” He used 
the common name of God. At other times he refused to use any 
definite name, and fell back upon his well-known “Eternities,” 
“ Immensities.” He veiled his meaning in metaphors. But wheth¬ 
er he did this or used the name of God he did not mean what the 
Christian or the Theist means by God. He did not mean a Personal 
Being, judging the world in righteousness; and still less a “Father 
in heaven.” He spoke in abundance of a law of judgment—of a 
righteous rule that will not let the wicked go unpunished. The 
“Veracities” and their unfailing sentences were ever in his mouth. 
The liar, the time-server—the impostor in every form—social, politi¬ 
cal, or religious—cannot hope to escape. There is laid up for all 
such a fearful looking for of judgment which will yet crush them and 
all their works. Here there is in full force the Biblical, or Calvinist 
element of Carlyle’s early education. But he was only too good a 
Calvinist, or rather he took up merely with one side of Calvinism— 
the side which emphasizes the bare will, the naked power of God. 
He could not conceive himself made save by a being who had a moral 
sense like his own. But he refused to acknowledge a Personal Life 
above his own life, a Life pitiful as well as just, Love as well as 
Law. And so his idea of the Divine readily sank into the idea of 
Supreme Force. He scouted the materialist who denied spirit, but 
no less he scouted the Christian who sought to realize the relation 
of the Supreme Spirit to himself as an individual—who recognized 
the idea of Personal Love as the only adequate conception of Spirit. 
He delighted in the vagueness which lies necessarily in this higher 
region, and clung to it with scorn of all who would give to the Su¬ 
preme a more concrete meaning. And so Spirit with him constant¬ 
ly passes into Force, Law into Might — Righteousness into mere 
order. The world is divinely governed, no doubt; but a Danton, a 
Cromwell, and a Frederick the Great are the special representatives 
and executive of this government. It is plain that the Carlylean and 
the Christian ideas of the Divine are not the same. When it is right 
to have done with the negro at whatever hazard, and to clear the 
earth of wretches by whatever process, you feel that the Divine 

9 


130 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


righteousness to which he appeals is not the righteousness of the 
Gospels. It is Calvinism not only without the theology, but without 
the morality which clung to it in the religion of his youth. It is a 
Divine kingdom—let us be thankful for Carlyle’s inflexible insistence 
that there is a righteous order in the world which will vindicate it¬ 
self against all deceptions and evasions of man—but a Divine king¬ 
dom without mercy for the penitent or pardon for the guilty—an 
Order of Judgment girdling the earth rather than a Father’s Love 
seeking the sinner while condemning his sin. 

Upon the whole we may venture to sum up the relation of Car¬ 
lyle’s teaching to Christianity as follows. It was negative in the 
following points: (1) In denial of miracle;* (2) in denial of the 
Divine Personality; and (3) in his disposition to exalt strength—to 
set forth the mighty in intellect and character rather than the “ poor 
in spirit”—as the Divine ideal. On the other hand, his teaching 
had an affinity with Christianity: (1) In his continual assertion of 
a Divine Power behind all matter; (2) his representation of man as 
the offspring of Such a Divine Power or Being; (3) his earnestness 
on behalf of a Moral Law or eternal distinction between right and 
wrong; and (4) his belief, vague though it may have been, in im¬ 
mortality. When his wife died so suddenly in his absence, his 
heart seemed breaking at the thought that he could never see her 
again. “ Yet then and afterwards, when he grew calm, and was in 
full possession of himself, he spoke always of a life to come, and the 
meeting of friends in it, as a thing not impossible. ” 

Carlyle was great as a Moral Teacher in so far as he preserved 
certain elements of his early creed. In his earnestness he honestly 
believed that he had discovered the truths he proclaimed. They 
seemed to him to have vanished from Christendom, sunk into do¬ 
tage and formality. But, truly speaking, every genuine element 
of his moral teaching, overlaid as it may have been by churchly 
traditions, was still living in Christianity. The eternal “Veracities,” 
every one of them, were Christian ideals, however obscured by con¬ 
vention or reduced in practice; and no teacher, certainly not Car¬ 
lyle, has been able to convert the ideal everywhere into fact. Con¬ 
vention, cant, re-asserts itself in the soil of human nature—springs 
like a noxious weed amid the growths of human passion and self- 
deception. The ideals of conduct require to be constantly re-as¬ 
serted and applied with renewed earnestness to the individual, so¬ 
cial, political, and religious life of mankind. Carlyle did a noble 
service in this way as a Preacher of the Kingdom of Divine Right- 


* Mr. Froude represents him as saying, quite definitely, “ It is as sure 
as Mathematics such a thing never happened.” 



THOMAS CARLYLE AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 131 

eousness in a world ever lapsing both from the idea and the realiza¬ 
tion of such a kingdom. But he not only did not advance the moral 
ideal; he rather retrogressed, by abstracting from it the spiritual 
conditions most fitted to nurture it and make it living and aggres¬ 
sive. By lowering the thought of God from that of a Sublime 
Personality whose highest name is Love, to a mere impersonal con¬ 
ception— whether in the singular or plural form—such as “The 
Divine,” “Silence,” the “Eternities,” “Immensities,”* he relapsed 
into a species of Stoicism which has long ago proved itself ineffect¬ 
ual both as a guide of human conduct and a response to the human 
heart. Like many noble minds he shrank from the fussiness and 
what he considered the degradation of religion as embodied in 
churches and their multiplied and mixed activities. The Divine 
seemed to him formalized and belittled in their narrow restrictions; 
but the remedy for this can never be found in turning the Divine 
into a mere vague generality which may mean anything or noth¬ 
ing. This is really to fall back in the progress of moral ideas, and 
to end, as it has done in all our modern endeavors after a Natural, 
or, as he would have called it,’“Natural-Supernatural” Religion, 
in an idealization of Force as the last word both of morality and 
religion. The idea of Personality embracing alike righteousness 
and love, order and pity, can alone make the Divine a living power 
to the human conscience—a Life above, redeeming and sanctifying 
as well as controlling human life. 


* This old phase of religious thought is known to every student of its 
history not only in Stoicism but in Gnosticism. In the very Judaism which 
Carlyle so much repudiated the same disinclination which he himself had 
to fix the idea of the Divine and name it was powerfully present, and had 
a significant influence in the development of the Christian conception of 
God. We fear it must be said that to Carlyle in some respect is due the 
modern habit, conspicuously exemplified in “ Natural Religion ” and Mr. 
Matthew Arnold’s writings, of using the name of God without any note 
of its Christian meaning—a habit in every respect pernicious, as both 
leading to moral confusion and ignoring the living growth of moral and 
religious ideas. 



132 


MOVEMENTS OE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


VI. 

JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 

Nothing can be greater than the contrast between the upbringing 
of Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. Yet both were of Scot¬ 
tish blood, and the father of the one and grandfather of the other 
were very much in the same social position. James Carlyle was 
originally a mason, and then a farmer. James Mill—the father of 
the author of the “History of British India”—was a Kincardine¬ 
shire shoemaker, more or less prosperous in his earlier years. 
Both lived in a cottage, and partook of the same simple rough 
diet which nurtured the Scottish peasant in the end of last century. 
Not only so; but the same ambition, so common to the Scottish 
peasant of the time, inspired both families. Carlyle’s father and 
mother wished him to become a minister of the Scottish Church. 
James Mill the shoemaker, and especially his wife who seems to 
have been originally of a higher position, as she was of a some¬ 
what higher character than her husband, brought up their son—or 
he was brought up by others under their special sanction—to the 
same ministry. Unlike Thomas Carlyle, James Mill not only stud¬ 
ied for the Christian ministry, but became a preacher in the Scottish 
Church, and officiated as such for three years. 

With these similarities in their origin there was the most marked 
difference in the early life of the two men. James Mill, as is well 
known, not only abandoned the profession to which he had been 
trained, but he definitely and entirely abandoned Christianity; and 
in the wonderful education which he gave his famous son religion 
had no part. Among all the books which the latter read—so ap¬ 
palling in number and variety—the Bible had no place. Carlyle’s 
early thought and imagination were fed upon the Bible. It was 
originally, and remained more than Goethe and all else, the basis of 
his varied culture. Not only in the Scriptures—but in the person 
of his mother particularly—religion was steadily before the mind of 
Carlyle as a youth. On the contrary, the very idea of religion was 
carefully excluded from John Stuart Mill’s mind. “I was brought 
up from the first,” are his own words, “without any religious be¬ 
lief.”* “I am one of the very few examples in this country of 
one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it. I 


* “ Autobiography,” p. 38. 




JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


133 


grew up in a negative state with regard to it.” This of course im¬ 
plies that his mother, whatever may have been her own sentiments, 
did nothing to make up his lack of religious education. James 
Mill, indeed, was not the man to permit any interference, even from 
such a source, with the remarkable plan of education which he had 
sketched for his son, and which, amid all his own hard work, he 
persistently carried out. We hear little or nothing of the wife and 
mother in this strange household. She was good-looking, it is said, 
with “a small fine figure, and an aquiline type of face, seen in her 
eldest son.” The marriage was one of affection, and the household 
became a large one, and was admirably managed by her. But the 
singular hardness of James Mill's character, and the failure on the 
part of his wife to prove a companion to him in his intellectual en¬ 
thusiasm, led to early disappointment, and “the union was never 
happy.”* The surprising thing is that the son, in his “Autobiog¬ 
raphy,” should never mention his mother when dwelling with such 
minute detail on his father’s character and opinions—here, as in 
other respects, differing so much from Carlyle. The greatest beauty 
of Carlyle’s biography would undoubtedly be gone if the figure of 
his mother, and his passionate devotion to her, were absent from its 
pages. His love for his mother, as her love to him, are more than 
any other the golden threads that run through his struggling life. 
In Mill we find nothing of this. There is no tenderness even in the 
feeling which he expresses towards his father, loyally as he was de¬ 
voted to him—and of his mother not a word. This speaks volumes 
as to the different character of the families, and of the great men 
who came from them. This typical difference will be seen on 
many occasions in their respective careers. 

There is a strange one-sidedness in John Mill’s account of his 
father’s views on religion, or—to put it otherwise—in James Mill’s 
religious opinions as represented by his son. It is evident from this 
account alone that, Christian preacher as James Mill had been, he 
had not studied Christianity either in its substance or evidences, in 
any large spirit. He had looked at it closely as a definite creed or 
set of opinions, but without any recognition of its development as 
either a speculative or ethical system. God was conceived by him 
after the Deistic fashion of last century as holding a purely exter¬ 
nal relation to the world, and as its Creator, directly responsible for 
all its evil and good alike. Religion was to him a mere device, or at 
best a growth of imaginative passion, for the most part evil rather 
than good. He is represented as affirming “a hundred times” 
“that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked 


* Bain’s “Biography of James Mill,” p. 60. 




134 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


in a constantly increasing progression—that mankind have gone on 
adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception 
of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called 
this God, and prostrated themselves before it. ” Such an opinion 
could only have been entertained by a man who, whatever other 
things he knew, did not know religion in any intelligent manner, 
who had not even conceived intelligently what religion means. It 
would be hardly possible to condense into a single sentence a series 
of grosser misconceptions. Whatever be the origin of religion it 
certainly does not come out of the mere wickedness of man’s heart, 
nor grow worse as history advances. It is infinitely more true to 
say that it springs out of the higher imagination and spiritual side 
of human nature, whatever grosser elements may also mingle in it, 
and it is certain that its progression has been, as surely as the pro¬ 
gression of morality, from lower and more imperfect to more ele¬ 
vated and perfect forms. James Mill’s dogmatism was at all times 
narrow and one-sided; but dogmatism so ignorant and superficial as 
that now quoted touches the very sanity of his intellectual concep¬ 
tions on the side of religion. 

James Mill’s infidelity evidently sprang from ignorant misconcep¬ 
tion of the Christian idea of God. He fell into the very snare which 
Philosophy such as his is fond of attributing to popular religion. 
The God of his imagination was anthropomorphic and nothing else 
—a Being supposed to sit in the heavens and to apportion, directly 
after the manner of a man, all the issues of good and evil in the 
world. There was no wonder that he came to reject such an idea— 
or with such a mechanical conception of Divine agency he should 
have plunged into Manichaeism as the only possible solution of the 
problem of the universe. He found it impossible to believe that a 
world so full of evil could be the work of an Author at once al¬ 
mighty and beneficent. It appeared to him a far more feasible the¬ 
ory that the world was the production of an Evil as well as Good 
Power struggling for mastery. Christian theism, according to him, 
instead of being an advance was really a retrogression from the old 
Sabaean or Manichsean theory. St. Augustine was profoundly mis¬ 
taken when he abandoned the latter theory for the former. We 
have been so accustomed to crudities of speculation in our day that 
we write these sentiments without a shock. But coming as they 
did from the mouth of a philosopher they are not the less nonsense. 
Of all conceptions of the government of the world the Dualistic is 
one of the coarsest and most untenable. It ignores alike the laws 
of reason and the comprehensive meaning of facts—both of which 
irresistibly point to a unity. All the lessons of Science and the 
hopes of life point in the same direction. 


JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


135 


But what are we to say of the Evil in the world ? It is there. 
And is not the idea of an allotted place of Evil to which the wicked 
are doomed a Christian conception? “Think of a Being,”Mill was 
accustomed to say, “who would make a Hell—who would create 
the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore 
with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be as¬ 
signed to terrible and everlasting punishment.” Even if there be a 
hell in Mr. Mill’s sense, it does not follow that God made it. Still 
less does it follow that the human race were “created” with the 
intention that “the great majority of them” should be consigned 
to it. A cruder explanation, ignoring a whole world of Christian 
argument, can hardly be imagined. Mr. Mill had no right to sub¬ 
stitute his own mechanical conception of Deity, and no less of 
good and evil, and then from his own point of view to condemn 
Christianity, which rests on quite other conceptions. There is no 
resemblance between the Divine Ideal of the New Testament, 
whose will is that “all men be saved,” and “an Omnipotent Au¬ 
thor of Hell.” Nor is there any resemblance between the evil which 
condemns men in the Gospel, and the evil to which Mr. Mill sup¬ 
poses them to be condemned. Evil is a great fact in the world, be¬ 
yond all question, but it is not more a fact than the consciousness 
that the worst evil is always the fruit of our own will. To make 
God the author of it because man is the doer of it is a generalization 
not only crude but self-condemned on the very testimony of the 
doer himself. To speak of God as making Hell, when the worst 
hell is that which a man makes for himself, is a poor fallacy as well 
as a gross caricature. It does not come out of the region of Chris¬ 
tian thought at all, which it is evident James Mill never entered. 
There was no room in his philosophy for the mystery of Will—Di¬ 
vine or human—and the very conditions of the Christian problem 
were therefore not before him. His caricature may find its justifi¬ 
cation in pulpit rhetoric—for what extravagances may not the pop¬ 
ular imagination reach? But one does not expect to find the phi¬ 
losopher rivalling and even outdoing the street preacher on his 
favorite ground, and the Christian apologist is not bound to bandy 
arguments of such a nature. 

In order to judge any religion fairly it must be judged from its 
highest point of view. James Mill seems never to have understood 
this, and his son, with a much fairer, and broader mind, which con¬ 
stantly owns the difference between certain popular notions of 
Christianity and Christianity itself, is yet apt, with all his school, to 
argue from the lower rather than from the higher level. Nothing 
is easier than to give a thing a bad name, and then show how 
worthless it is; in other words, to debase the Christian ideal, and 


136 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


then point out how unworthy of credence it is. In no other sub¬ 
ject save religion would such a mode of argument he allowed. On 
any other subject men feel bound to accept its highest interpre¬ 
tation as the only true interpretation. The students of a special 
subject are allowed to be the judges, and the only judges of its right 
meaning. But every one thinks himself capable of sitting in judg¬ 
ment upon religion although he may have given no study whatever 
to the subject. And the whole class of philosophical writers to 
whom the Mills belonged were in the habit of fighting with unfair 
weapons of this kind. We do not suppose and do not affirm that 
they were conscious of any unfairness ; but the effect of their argu¬ 
ments is not the less unfair. In treating past systems of morality 
they would carefully endeavor to find their essential principles in 
their best modes of expression; and it was therefore a singular per¬ 
versity which led them, whenever they approached the subject of 
religion, to take up with its flimsiest and most unworthy expres¬ 
sions. But a man so non-religious as James Mill could hardly be 
expected to understand Christianity any more than a man without 
any soul or faculty for music could understand harmony. There 
are men, and James Mill was one of them, so utterly lacking in spir¬ 
itual instinct that their judgments as to religion really merit no 
more attention than other men’s judgments about music. We by 
no means say the same thing of John Stuart Mill. We shall have 
occasion to show that he possessed far higher instincts. But he 
was trained in a school which not only knew nothing of religion, 
but may be said deliberately to have despised it. It was outside 
the whole range of his experience and culture. Men are not sup¬ 
posed to be and cannot be experts in anything the very rudiments 
of which they have never learned; and we have no right therefore 
beforehand to look to John Stuart Mill’s writings as possessing any 
special authority on this subject. 

Of John Stuart Mill’s general education under his father we need 
not speak. He has himself given us the most ample and detailed 
account of it. It is a marvellous story, the interesting effect of 
which, however, is impaired by its great singularity. Not only 
was Mill beyond all other boys ever heard of in his aptitude for 
learning, and in the amount and variety of his acquisitions, while 
still a bare youth, he lived to wear all his knowledge and learning 
as the flower of a rare and noble intellect. Any other boy we fancy 
must have broken down and become effete before manhood under 
such a pressure of education. He could read Greek fluently when 
about six years old, at the time young people in general are begin¬ 
ning the first standard. Before he was eight he had read the whole 
of Herodotus and a considerable part of Xenophon. He had read 


JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


137 


six of Plato’s Dialogues, including the Thesetetus in 1813, while still 
only seven. It takes away one’s breath to speak of such achieve¬ 
ments, and they represent a mere fraction of the story which he tells 
us.* Father and son together, the former as teacher, the latter as 
pupil, present in the first chapter of the autobiography a picture 
which is incomparable—the tenacious firmness of the father in urg¬ 
ing the son along the pathway of knowledge, severely testing every 
step in his progress as if a matter of course needing no acknowledg¬ 
ment, and the eager responsiveness of the son, honoring rather than 
loving the hand which led him onward with such rigid resolve. 
Besides the Classics, Greek and Latin (Latin after Greek) and Math¬ 
ematics, he studied diligently and copiously History, English Poetry, 
although with a less universal interest, Chemistry, Logic, Political 
Economy. He read Aristotle’s Analytics, in the original of course, 
when about twelve. In all he was more or less a proficient before he 
was fourteen, when he went abroad (1820) for a six months’ sojourn 
in the south of France. Withal, he tells us, and we believe him, he 
was not self-conceited. His father, he says, completely succeeded 
in keeping him out of the way of hearing himself praised, and so he 
was not at all aware that his attainments “were anything unusual 
at his age.” In personal manner, in mature years, he was certainly 
free from all self-assumption. It may be more doubtful whether his 
intellectual manner, as shown in his writings, does not all along hear 
trace of a certain conscious mental superiority, especially when con¬ 
troverted on any of his favorite topics. It could hardly be other¬ 
wise. 

In all the variety of his studies, as already indicated, Biblical or 
religious literature had no place. His mind had no religious aspira¬ 
tions. It found all its satisfaction in secular acquisition, and in spec¬ 
ulation and logical analysis. From the first he was a “ master of 
sentences,” writing out under his father’s eyes elaborate abstracts of 
the books he read, especially in history and philosophy. No youth, 
I should think, ever wrote so many digests, or prepared himself so 
carefully, by mastery of the thoughts of others, for the work of 
thought himself. He describes the great influence exercised upon 
him by his first direct contact with Bentham’s speculations. His 
whole previous education had been in a sense “a course of Ben¬ 
thamism;” but, after his return from abroad, he began the study of 
Bentham on his own account, as interpreted in Dumont’s “Traite 
de Legislation.” The reading of this book was “an epoch” in his 
life. The classifications, “more clear and compact than in Ben¬ 
tham’s original work, were illuminating in the highest degree.” Pie 


* “Autobiography,” pp. 5-25. 



138 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


felt “ taken up to an eminence,” from which he could survey “a vast 
mental domain, and see stretching out into the distance intellectual 
results beyond all computation.” And to this intellectual clearness 
there seemed to be added “ the most inspiring prospects of practical 
improvement in human affairs. ” ‘ ‘ When I laid down the last vol¬ 

ume of the ‘Traite’” he goes on, “I had become a different being. 
The ‘principle of utility,’understood as Bentham understood it, 
and applied in the manner in which he applied it, fell exactly into 
its place as the key-stone which held together the detached and 
fragmentary component parts of my knowledge and belief. It gave 
unity to my conception of things. I now had opinions; a creed, a 
doctrine, a philosophy, in one among the best senses of the word,” 
he adds, “a religion.” 

In the following year he began to write independently. In 1823 
he was appointed a clerk under his father in the office of Examiner 
of Correspondence in the East India Company, in whose service he 
gradually rose to be chief conductor of the Correspondence with 
India in one of the leading departments—that of Native States. Fi¬ 
nally he became Examiner, but only two years before the abolition 
of the Company (1858). His first essays in authorship were, as in 
so many other cases, in the newspapers, in the end of 1822 and be¬ 
ginning of 1823; and when the Westminster Review was launched in 
April, 1824, he became a regular contributor from the second number 
till the year 1828, when through some misunderstanding with the 
editor, Mr. Bowring, afterwards Sir John Bowring, he ceased to write 
for it. He describes his own early performances in literature as 
“dry ”and “entirely argumentative.” He could manage argument 
as the natural fruit of his education. But no other mode of compo¬ 
sition came to him naturally at this time. He admits, indeed, that 
the phrase applied to the Benthamites in general of being merely 
reasoning machines—“inapplicable” in some cases — was by no 
means untrue of himself in those years. His great object in associ¬ 
ation with others was to draw them into argument. In the winter 
of 1822-23 he formed a society of young men “agreeing in funda¬ 
mental principles,” to meet together once a fortnight to read essays 
and discuss questions. He gave it the name of the “Utilitarian” 
Society, which was the first usage of the word he believes in its cur¬ 
rent philosophical sense. He disclaims inventing it, however, and 
says he found it in one of Galt’s novels, where a Scotch clergyman 
warns his hearers “not to leave the Gospel and become Utilitarians.” 
He was evidently also the inspiring spirit of meetings which were 
held for several years at Mr. Grote’s house, for reading and conver¬ 
sation chiefly in Political Economy and Logic. The meetings were 
from half-past eight till ten in the morning, and appear to have been 


JOHN STITABT MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 139 

highly fruitful, so far as his own speculations on both these subjects 
were concerned. “I have always dated from these conversations/’ 
he says, “ my own real inauguration as an original and independent 
thinker.” He was an active member of still another association, the 
object of which was to cultivate the gifts of speech rather than of 
reasoning. Roebuck, he, and some others met in 1825 at the “Co¬ 
operative Society,” composed of Owenites, which met for weekly 
public discussions in Chancery Lane. They went to this Society, 
not as approving of Owenism, but with a view of discussing the 
principles which it involved, some of the chief Owenists acting in 
concert with them, nothing loath to have a controversy with oppo¬ 
nents, rather than a tame debate among themselves. Charles Austin, 
Charles Yilliers, and a once well-known educational writer, Mr. 
Ellis, were among the number of the speakers ; but the speaker that 
struck Mill most, although he dissented from nearly every word he 
said, was Thirlwall, the historian, afterwards Bishop of St. David’s, 
“ then a Chancery Barrister unknown, except for a high reputation 
for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of 
Austin and Macaulay.” “ His speech was in answer to one of mine,” 
the autobiography continues. “Before he had uttered two sen¬ 
tences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I 
have never since heard any one that I placed above him.” 

These debates led to a new combination, in imitation of the Edin¬ 
burgh Speculative Society, where Brougham and Horner were 
known to have contended. This Society lasted for many years, 
and occupied much of Mill’s time. The chief difficulty at first was 
to secure a sufficient number of Tory speakers. Almost all the 
members were Liberals of different orders and degrees, such as 
Macaulay, Thirlwall, Praed, Lord Howick, Samuel Wilberforce 
(afterwards Bishop of Oxford), the two Bulwers (Edward -and 
Henry), and Fonblanque, the well-known editor of the Examiner. 
It was difficult in such circumstances to maintain the life of the 
Society; but in 1826-27 two young Tory speakers of great ability 
were found—the late Mr. Hayward and Sergeant Shee—while Cock- 
burn, the late Chief-justice, and Charles Buller, Carlyle’s pupil, 
joined the Society on the Liberal side. The result was the most 
lively discussions between the Tory lawyers and the “philosophic 
Radicals,” attracting a wide attention. A new element was added 
to the Society in 1828 and 1829, when the Coleridgians, in the per¬ 
sons of Maurice and Sterling, made their appearance as a second 
Liberal and even Radical party, on totally different grounds from 
Benthamism, and vehemently opposed to it. “Our debates were 
very different from those of common debating societies, for they 
habitually consisted of the strongest arguments and most philosophic 


140 MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

principles, which either side was able to produce, thrown often into 
close and terse confutations of one another,”* 

A life of such incessant and severe intellectual application—with 
no out-door exercise except long walks in the country—led with 
young Mill to the inevitable consequence. He fell into a state of 
ill-health and depression of spirits. He has himself described this 
at length in his autobiography as “ a crisis ” in his mental history. 
He had set before himself the great object of being “ a reformer of 
the world.” He had found all his happiness — he was still only 
twenty years of age — in this high ambition. Suddenly, in the 
autumn of 1826, he felt as if this great object no longer interested 
him. He was “in a dull state of nerves,” and became uneasy and 
dissatisfied. He compares his condition, just as Carlyle did a few 
years earlier, to that “in which converts to Methodism usually are” 
when smitten by that first “conviction of sin.” He asked himself, 
What if all after which he aspired were realized? Would his hap¬ 
piness be secure? The answer of “an irrepressible self-conscious¬ 
ness within him” was distinctly “no.” At this his heart “sank 
within him ” and the whole future of his life seemed to fall to the 
ground. Neither sleep nor distraction could chase away the cloud 
which rested on him. He awoke to an ever-renewed consciousness 
of his misery. For months the cloud ‘ ‘ seemed to grow thicker and 
thicker.” Mill treats this unhappy crisis of his as mainly if not 
entirely mental, and the inference he would have us to draw is that 
he then underwent—as Carlyle, we also saw, supposed—a new birth 
or conversion. There is indeed in Mill’s case no pretence of any 
religious change. There was really no basis for such a change in 
his mental experience and association. All thoughts of sin or moral 
shortcoming were entirely absent from him. What the Methodist 
means by “conviction of sin ” was unintelligible to him then and at 
all times. But a change we believe of a thorough character did 
come to him, partly moral and partly intellectual. After long suf¬ 
fering a ray of light broke in upon his gloom. He was reading 
Marmontel’s “ Memoires, ” and the picture of self-sacrifice there 
brought before him in the resolution of the young Marmontel after 
his father’s death to be all that his father had been to the family, 
moved him to tears, and woke within him brighter hopes. From 
this moment his burden was lighter. The cloud gradually drew off, 
and he was able once more to enjoy life. 

It is remarkable how the language of religion comes to Mill’s lips 
as it did to Carlyle’s with still more touching force, at such a period 
of inward conflict. There was apparently, however, less of a con- 


* “Autobiography,” pp. 128-29. 




JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


141 


flict in the one case than the other. Two important results are 
attributed by him to this crisis. He modified his theory of life so 
as no longer to pursue happiness as a conscious object, but duty 
rather, in the conviction that happiness was sure to follow; and he 
learned that true culture was to be found in a wider range of expe¬ 
rience than he had previously aimed at. Feeling had hitherto little 
to do with his education. His father’s idea had been that the feel¬ 
ings would always take sufficient care of themselves, and did not 
require to be specially cultivated. But now he saw how inadequate 
his former purely intellectual or logical standard had been; and the 
cultivation of the feelings became henceforth one of the cardinal 
points in his ethical and philosophical creed. 

Such is, very briefly summed up, Mill’s own account of this phase 
of his mental history, to which he evidently attached great signifi¬ 
cance. More widely viewed, there can be little doubt that, as in 
Carlyle’s case, the state of his physical health had far more to do 
with the crisis than he was disposed to allow. Dr. Bain indeed, 
who lived in such close association with him for many years, al¬ 
though not at this early time, is disposed to attribute all his dejec¬ 
tion now and on subsequent occasions in his life, which were not un¬ 
frequent, to purely physical causes, the “chief of which was of 
course overwork of the brain.” If ever a young brain was over¬ 
taxed, Mill’s certainly was, and there seems every reason to conclude 
that Dr. Bain’s explanation is the correct one, although we may 
allow more than he does for accompanying mental perplexities. In 
his unhappiness there was nothing, strictly speaking, of the higher 
spiritual order; but the loss of his youthful ideal was so far akin to 
a consciousness of spiritual loss and insufficiency; and it worked as 
all such losses do—baffled hope, defeated ambition—like “madness 
in the brain.” Overstrain, no doubt, as in so many other cases, was 
the root of the suffering. But who shall measure in the inner 
chamber of consciousness how far the spiritual interlaces itself with 
the physical, and contributes to the intolerable misery that accom¬ 
panies such nervous depression? 

There can be no doubt that John Stuart Mill emerged from his 
mental crisis a richer and broader-minded man than he was before. 
Music, poetry—especially the poetry of Wordsworth; the associa¬ 
tion with Maurice and Sterling, both of whom—he owns, while de¬ 
ploring in the former a greater waste of intellectual power (as he 
thought) than in any of his contemporaries—were of considerable 
help in his development; and finally Carlyle; all assisted to enlarge 
his thought and rescue him from the narrow intellectual groove in 
which he had been trained. His father looked askance at all these 
wider studies and influences. Many of his father’s friends did the 


142 MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

same. It is amusing, yet in a way melancholy, to read of the anx¬ 
ieties he excited, lest he should forsake “ the true faith ” of the expe¬ 
rience-philosophy. He was watched with more jealousy than the 
promising Christian neophyte by old theologians, lest he should stray 
from the fold. George Grote, Dr. Bain tells us, had always certain 
misgivings about him. It was he, as we shall see again, who chiefly 
watched for his backsliding. “Much as I admire John Mill,”he 
used to say, “my admiration is always mixed with fear.” So soon 
does the old leaven of Sectarianism, erroneously supposed to be 
a special property of Christendom, assert itself in the most alien 
creeds, and blend its noxious power with the boldest freethinking. 

James Mill died in 1836 of pulmonary consumption, the year after 
the starting of the London Review, which in its fifth number became 
the London and Westminster Review, the old Westminster being 
merged with it. John became editor of this Review, of which Sir 
William Molesworth was the proprietor. He continued editor for 
five years, during which the Review became a powerful organ of pub¬ 
lic opinion. It was designed to represent the “ philosophic Radi¬ 
cals,” of whom great hopes were for a time entertained by Mill, not 
a few of them, including Mr. Grote, having been returned in the Re¬ 
formed Parliament. These hopes, however, soon vanished, and the 
Review continued more memorable during the time of his editor¬ 
ship, for his own articles on Tennyson, De Tocqueville, Armand 
Carrel, Carlyle, Bentham, and Coleridge, than for anything else. In 
these papers the author gave full vent to his altered and enlarged 
range of thought. He drew off from the narrower Benthamism of 
his earlier writings, with a result very distasteful to many of his 
early friends. They in their turn drew back from the Review . * 
But Mill was now in the full maturity of his powers, and was able 
to stand on his own feet without special encouragement from any 
quarter. He felt himself a power both in the intellectual and polit¬ 
ical world; and although he did not continue beyond the year 1840 
to edit the Review, he never flinched from any of the broader con¬ 
victions of which he had made it the vehicle. He remained espe¬ 
cially proud that he had vindicated so successfully Lord Durham’s 
Canadian policy, and contributed to establish Carlyle’s long-delayed 
fame. 

During all this time Mill was elaborating his great work on Logic. 
He may be said to have begun this book as far back as 1830, when 
he first put upon paper certain ideas, afterwards worked into his 
preliminary chapter. He busied himself with the subject from 
time to time, till in the summer of 1838 he set about its systematic 


* See “ J. S. Mill: A Criticism,” by Dr. A. Bain, pp. 56-57. 



JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


143 


development; and in the end of 1841 he had the book ready for the 
press. It was his habit, he tells us, in connection with the prepara¬ 
tion of this work, to write all his books and articles twice over. A 
draft was first prepared to the very end of the subject—and then 
the whole begun again de novo —an admirable plan for giving pro¬ 
portion and due effect to the several portions of a book. The ‘ ‘ Sys¬ 
tem of Logic,’’ready by the end of 1841, was not published till the 
spring of 1843. It immediately attracted wide attention. The au¬ 
thor confesses himself astonished at its success. On this book more 
than any other his fame will rest. 

The publication of his “Logic” may be said to open what Mill him¬ 
self calls the third portion of his career, when he became an estab¬ 
lished reputation in philosophy, and rose to be head of the school 
which his father founded. For whatever changes of opinion he un¬ 
derwent, and however far he enlarged his general ideas in literature 
and education, he remained substantially true to his father’s philo¬ 
sophical standpoint. He is at particular pains to point this out in his 
“ Autobiography,” and to show that he lost nothing that was good 
in his old mode of thought. But it was unnecessary to give any 
assurance of this. The “System of Logic”is in itself the satisfac¬ 
tory evidence that he stood in philosophy where his father stood. 
It was, and in some respects continues to be, the most complete 
manual of the experience-philosophy, even after all that has been 
done in that line during the last forty years. With Mr. Herbert 
Spencer and others that philosophy has entered on a new departure, 
by the help of the principle of Evolution. But the ‘ ‘ Logic ” is still the 
most complete text-book of the doctrine which, according to the 
author’s own statement, “derives all knowledge from experience, 
and all moral and intellectual qualities from the direction given to 
the associations.” It is at the same time the best polemic against 
“the opposite school of Metaphysics—the ontological and ‘innate 
principles ’ school.” The ideas which it embodies, and which give 
its chief interest to the work, strike, as we shall see, all spiritual 
philosophy at the root, and lead to the subversion of revealed re¬ 
ligion. 

The “ System of Logic ” was followed in 1848 by the “ Principles 
of Political Economy,” which more than rivalled the success of the 
former work, and has also taken its place among the great books of 
the time. With the publication of this volume Mill’s creative activ¬ 
ity as a writer may be said to cease. Some of his most interesting 
writings appeared after this, as his volume on “Liberty” in 1859, 
and his “Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy” in 1865; 
but in none of these writings is the constructive effort so great as 
in these main works. “On Liberty ” was probably the most popu- 


144 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


lar of all his hooks, as it is the most charming to read. There are 
few minds of a liberal turn who can have perused it for the first 
time without a thrill of delight, even if the continued advance of 
liberal thought has now made some of its eloquence comparatively 
commonplace.* There are none of his writings again more acute, 
subtle, and in part strong, than his attack on the Hamiltonian phi¬ 
losophy. Yet, as Dr. Bain admits, he had spent his force as an 
originator on his two larger works. They contain all the pith of 
his thinking; and his after-labors were in the main expository and 
polemical, rather than constructive. By the date of his “Political 
Economy ” (1848) he had acquired all the elements of his thinking, 
accumulated all his stores, among the last of which were the fertile 
ideas he derived from the study of Comte. His mind remained 
fixed from this time, while his reputation rapidly grew. He cer¬ 
tainly brought nothing further to the support of his special princi¬ 
ples. The three posthumous “Essays on Religion,” interesting as 
they are, form no exception; for our purpose they are more valua¬ 
ble, perhaps, than any other of his writings. They enable us, along 
with his autobiography, to see more clearly into the peculiar char¬ 
acteristics of his religious opinions. But not even Mill’s greatest 
admirers — these admirers, indeed, least of all—would claim for 
them any peculiar intellectual merit among his productions. There 
are, in fact, prominent traces of weakness in all of them, and if he 
had never written anything bearing with more penetration and 
strength of argument upon the foundations of religion than these 
essays, they'would hardly have claimed a place in these lectures. 
They demand from us, however, some special notice. 

But we must first endeavor to fix Mill’s main significance in the 
modern development of religious thought. This significance is al¬ 
most exclusively derived from the fundamental principles of which 
he was the expositor, as the chief teacher of the experience-philoso¬ 
phy in his day. John Mill inherited this philosophy quite as much 
as most Christian thinkers inherit opposite principles. His ‘ * Essays 
on Religion,” his volume on Hamilton, as well as many of his spe¬ 
cial papers, show that his life of thought was a continued advance 
from the narrower notions of his school. Yet, as we have already 
implied, he was, from the first, and continued to the last, true to its 


* Charles Kingsley, when he first took up the volume in Parker’s shop, 
became so entranced with it that he sat down and read it through with¬ 
out stopping. As he left the shop he said it had “ made him a clearer- 
headed, braver-minded man on the spot.” I read it first on the railway 
between Oxford and London with something of the same ennobling 
effect. 



JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


145 


main principles, notwithstanding all the advances he made in mere 
intellectual and poetic feeling. The doctrine of the absolute uni¬ 
formity of Nature, or to put it in the language which he himself 
chiefly adopts in his autobiography—the dbctrine of the necessit}’- 
of all human character and conduct, no less than of all material 
phenomena—was his cardinal doctrine. His love of liberty in all 
human affairs, and his eloquent defence of Individualism, never 
touched the root principle on which all his philosophy, no less than 
his father’s philosophy rested, and which came to him as a sort of 
religion. He never ceased to be the Apostle of Circumstance,* as 
opposed alike to free will in human conduct and the freedom of 
Divine Action in Nature, although with a wider knowledge and a 
more candid perception of the difficulties of the doctrine than most 
of his school had. 

His doctrine is most fully expounded in the famous chapter “of 
the Law of Universal Causation ” in his “ System of Logic.” f From 
his own point of view, and the postulate which lies at the founda¬ 
tion of all his thinking—the postulate, namely, that all our knowl¬ 
edge is derived from sensation—this chapter is admirably reasoned 
and conclusive. But like Hume’s famous argument about miracles, 
it gets all its force from the assumption of the very thing to be 
proved. If it is true, as Hume maintained, that the Laws of Nature 
are established by an unalterable experience, of course such a thing 
as a miracle can never have happened. No testimony can be of the 
slightest value against an unalterable experience. But then this was 
the very point in question. Has experience been unalterable f That 
a philosopher says so does not settle the question. No amount of 
induction—in other words, no conclusion drawn from any amount 
of observation and experiment, can constitute an absolute truth, or 
convert a generality of science into a universal principle. Even so, 
Mill’s Law of “Universal Causation,” which on his own philosoph¬ 
ical basis is irrefragable, ceases to be so when looked at more com¬ 
prehensively. If all our knowledge is derived from sensation— 
from the observation and generalized experience of our senses—we 
cannot of course have any knowledge that does not come under the 
law of scientific induction. The unbroken continuities of Nature 


* He himself well says of his father in his “Autobiography“His 
fundamental doctrine was the formation of all human character by Cir¬ 
cumstances, through the universal principle of association, and the con¬ 
sequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral and intellectual 
condition of mankind by education. Of all his doctrines, none was more 
important than this, or needs more to be insisted upon.” P. 108 (2). 
t Chap, v., B. III. 


10 



146 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


in co-existence or succession are all that we can ever learn in this 
way. Nature and human life present themselves to us as an end¬ 
less surface, linked by apparently indissoluble sequences. It has 
no life but the life of circumstance. But then this is the very ques¬ 
tion. Is all our knowledge so derived? Nay, can knowledge, strictly 
speaking, arise in this way at all? Could we even get experience, 
properly so called, on such a basis? Experience implies unity, co¬ 
hesion, co-ordination. But is not sense in itself a mere repetition 
of vanishing particulars, which come and go without any cohesion ? 
What brings order into the accidental chaos? Mere association? as 
supposed by Mill. Is it not rather a certain creative power of the 
mind itself, which builds up mere sense-accumulations into experi¬ 
ence, and then into knowledge? To speak of knowledge apart from 
experience is of course absurd. To speak of experience apart from 
sense is equally absurd. All our knowledge goes back to sense— 
to our contact with the outer world. It is primarily dependent on 
sense. But mere sense could never yield it. The synthesis of the 
inward and outward is “the essential fact in all cognition.” And 
this analysis of cognition, which recognizes an inward creative as 
well as an outward accumulative element, cannot be disposed of by 
mere ridicule of “innate principles.” “Innate principles” may be 
exploded, but an innate power, which is itself not the product of 
sense, cannot be dispensed with. 

Mill might not have denied this analysis so far. He came in the 
end, in his criticism of the Hamilton philosophy, to a species of 
Idealism, or “possibility of sensation” as the root of knowledge. 
But the inner mental, no less than the outer material factor, was to 
him a mere evolution of circumstances. It had no originality. It 
was itself a new circumstance, the outgrowth of physical conditions. 
This is the fundamental antithesis between the materialistic and 
spiritualistic schools, and needs always to be broadly stated. To 
the one school man in his whole nature is the mere growth of phys¬ 
ical forces. To the other he is endowed with a mind which may 
or may not have grown along with Nature—although all attempts 
to trace a mere natural growth of life or mind have utterly and con¬ 
fessedly failed—but which is in itself, in its essential character, ab¬ 
solutely distinct from other natural products. It is conscious, 
whereas they are unconscious. It is free, whereas they are bound. 
It is responsible, whereas they are without any sense of obligation. 
It stands, therefore, not merely by any religious claim made for it, 
but by its own intrinsic being—all that makes it what it essentially 
is—outside the alleged law of “Universal Causation.” 

Not only so. But the idea of Causation itself has its root in the 
very distinction of mind and matter. It arises only from our self- 


JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 147 

consciousness—our personal experience of ability to move our limbs, 
or to resist our natural impulses. We have no other index of pow¬ 
er. Will, in short, is the suggestion of Cause, which we transfer to 
the world at large. And in making such a transference, we follow 
strictly, as it has been recently said, “the scientific instinct and the 
scientific process. We are putting into the same class the motions 
that we observe in other things and the motions we observe in our¬ 
selves.”* The idea of Cause thus originated “becomes expanded 
into law, as we recognize its communication from one thing to an¬ 
other,” and so on indefinitely in continuous and regular succession. 
This is what Mr. Mill calls the “ invariableness ” of the order of Nat¬ 
ure. But “invariableness” first of all is not the true note of Caus¬ 
ation. This note is origination and not order, invariable or other¬ 
wise, as he constantly makes it. The word retains to the last the 
traces of its origin, and when men speak of a cause they do not 
mean the mere antecedent of a phenomenon, but the original pow¬ 
er which called it into being. Secondly, “invariableness” can only 
be predicated, even of the order of Nature, by assuming that there 
is nothing behind this order, and that our experience of its uniform¬ 
ity has never been broken and never can be broken. But no expe¬ 
rience can justify a conclusion of this kind. It may justify a pre¬ 
sumption; it cannot generate an absolute and necessary truth; and 
especially in the face of the suggestion of a Power behind phenome¬ 
na that lies within the very idea of Cause from the first. We cannot; 
without inverting the order of knowledge, convert the external uni¬ 
formity of Nature into an iron necessity, which de facto excludes 
the fact through which alone we have been able to rise to the appre¬ 
hension of Causation or uniformity in Nature at all. 

When we look at this great question from the moral side, Mr. 
Mill’s cardinal doctrine becomes still more untenable. As even sci¬ 
ence may be said to begin with will, so all morality and religion not 
only begin, but end with the same central fact of human life. The 
moral law has no meaning, save as applied to that self-consciousness 
within us which is ever the same amid all the changes of our ex¬ 
ternal life, and the modifications of our moral growth. The com¬ 
mands which it lays upon us are commands addressed to our wills 
—in other words, to ourselves—ever the same in virtue of the mys¬ 
terious gift of personality. It is only thus we become responsible, 
and in contrast with all other creatures enter within the circle of 
moral and religious aspiration. If the will be a fiction, a mere 
cluster of hereditary instincts indissolubly bound together by the 


* Bishop Temple’s Bampton Lectures on the “Relation between Re¬ 
ligion and Science,” p. 21. 



148 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


law of association, and the growth throughout, therefore, of circum¬ 
stance, it seems unintelligible how the ideas of right and wrong 
should cling to us as they do—how, in short, what we mean by con¬ 
science should arise. The sense of right and wrong rests on an ab¬ 
solute feeling that we are free to choose the good and avoid the evil. 
Moral ideas are no doubt largely developed by association and cir¬ 
cumstance, but moral acts come from our own free choice in such 
a sense at least as that the deepest misery may spring from wrong 
action. It seems impossible to explain this save by recognizing 
Will as an original power within us, and conscience as its Divine 
guide. If Will be the growth of circumstance, conscience can only 
be a calculation of chances. And how in such a case should it ever 
accuse and condemn us? We can never really act otherwise than 
we do. And yet that we can so act, and have frequently failed so 
to act, is the experience of every higher nature. The sting of a lost 
good is that we ourselves lost it. The misery of a present evil is 
that we ourselves did it. Once admit the thought that the good 
was never in our power, and the evil a necessary sequence in our 
life, and the whole fabric, both of religion and morality, disappears. 
Responsibility in any true sense vanishes. Nay, self-consciousness 
becomes a dream. For the very essence of this consciousness is 
that it erects itself against the law of causality, which is supposed to 
bind all being in order, and to explain all. It refuses this explana¬ 
tion. It says, ‘ ‘ I am not bound. I am free to choose the evil or 
the good. I am more than nature, or any product of nature. I 
may be crushed by its laws, but I am more than any of its laws. I 
have that within me which no mere circumstance has given. I have 
will and conscience, and divine reason. I am the child of God, and 
the inspiration of the Almighty hath given me understanding.” 

All true morality and religion, therefore, imply in man a breach 
of Mill’s law of natural causation. In other words, the experience- 
philosophy, of which he was the great teacher, is a philosophy in¬ 
adequate to grasp the* realities of human nature and life. There is 
more in man than is dreamed of in this philosophy : and the whole 
course of its expositor’s own intellectual development was so far an 
evidence of this. He maintained to the last that character, like all 
natural phenomena, is born of circumstance; but he allowed for 
what he called the action of the will upon circumstances, and seemed 
to himself in this way to discriminate between his doctrine of neces¬ 
sity and the common interpretation of that doctrine as fatalism. 
But his reserves were merely sentimental; they were forced upon 
him by the urgency of facts to which he could not shut his eyes. 
They did not spring from any change in his point of departure; and 
his system was really fatalistic, whatever he thought'of it. He held 


JOHN STtJART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


149 


it with less clearness and firmness the longer he lived. He had 
neither the hardihood nor the coarseness of the true faith which an¬ 
imated his father and his father’s unhesitating followers. This 
really argued that he had higher elements of character and more 
comprehension of thought than they had, although they did not 
think so. His very hesitations in the full acceptance of his father’s 
creed were tributes to a more expansive philosophy, and although 
he never reached the clear heaven of such a philosophy, he left be¬ 
hind him enough to confound the partisans of that narrow no-faith 
which have made such a boast of his name. 

This brings us to the consideration of his special view of religion, 
as explained in his posthumous essays. It is evident from these 
essays that the subject of religion fascinated him, studiously as he 
had been trained without any knowledge of it. Not. only so, but 
he came to realize—with all his loyalty to his father’s main teach¬ 
ing—that religion was a far more important factor in human life 
than he had been led to believe. All the same the savor of his he¬ 
reditary teaching remained, and mixed itself with all his thought. 
His father’s pessimism, for example, intensified by a vein of intel¬ 
lectual pride, partly inherited and partly his own, appears promi¬ 
nently in the first essay on “Nature.” James Mill thought very 
little of the world. It was to him upon the whole a bad world. 
Human life was “a poor thing at the best.” The son turned the 
father’s thought—which was also his own—into a sort of philoso¬ 
phy. It is difficult to say whether Christianity was more obnoxious 
to him than “the optimistic Deism or worship of the order of Nat¬ 
ure,” to which modern scepticism has so much inclined, and more 
than ever since his time. A “natural religion ” like that recently 
expounded under this name would have seemed to him essentially 
unreasonable. Nature, so far from being to him an object of ad¬ 
miration, as it was to Wordsworth and the author of “Natural Re¬ 
ligion,” was, on the contrary, a cruel and mischievous power. “All 
the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one 
another are,” in his opinion, “Nature’s every-day performances.” 
No writer of sane mental comprehension has ever drawn such an 
indictment against nature. He does not even give it the credit 
of that “order”of which he elsewhere speaks so much. Disorder 
is rather “a counterpart of Nature’s ways,” he says. “Anarchy 
and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, even as death 
by a hurricane and a pestilence. ” 

This tone of superiority to the world—as if it might have been 
better if they had had the making of it—is a remarkable feature in 
the intellectual character of both the Mills. They seem to have 
been unconscious of the strange intellectual presumption it implied, 


150 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


and its essential inconsistency with the fundamental principle of 
their own philosophy. For if Nature be supreme in its facts and 
laws, and there be nothing but a development of Nature, it seems, 
to say the least, to be an unreasonable philosophical attitude to in¬ 
dulge in abuse of it or its manifestations. Mill not only does this, 
but in the most elaborate of his essays—that on Theism—he may be 
said to construct a Theistic theory on his recognition of the imper¬ 
fections of the world. It was this essay which, more than the oth¬ 
ers, proved a stumbling-block to the school which looked to him as 
its chief apostle. It is a tribute so far to the candor and openness 
of mind which characterized him beyond all the other members of 
his school, but it is in some respects the least successful of all his 
writings. In his treatment of the argument for a First Cause, he 
recurs to the old thought which pervades the chapter on Causation 
in the “Logic,” and which we may be excused therefore from still 
further glancing at. “All the power that Will possesses over phe¬ 
nomena,” he contends, “is shared by other and far more powerful 
agents,” such as heat and electricity, which evolve motion on a far 
larger scale than human volition. And w T hat right have we there¬ 
fore, he virtually asks, just as Hume did, to conceive of intelligent 
will or mind as the original cause of all things? “what peculiar 
privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, 
that we must make it the model of the universe?” None at all, we 
admit, on a mere phenomenal basis. But once suppose that there 
is more in heaven and earth than we can gather from the knowledge 
of phenomena—that man is more than matter—that mind is more 
than any combination of matter, and all analogy between mental 
force and other forms of force disappears. Does it not even disap¬ 
pear when the facts are looked at in themselves? All forms of 
material force are obviously in themselves mere transformations. 
They operate unconsciously; they are merely changes — transfer¬ 
ences. We recognize force in them because we have experience of 
force in ourselves; but they do not themselves yield the idea of 
force. We could never get the idea from them ; and therefore 
Comte, the most consistent of all phenomenalists, would have the 
term disused as misleading—as implying something of which we 
have no knowledge. The idea of force is only given in the action of 
mind; it is tbe product of self-consciousness—of nothing else. And 
does not this separate conscious Will from all other facts in Nature? 
It is confessedly untranslatable. No process of merely natural 
change can generate it. Does it not, therefore, by its very charac¬ 
ter, stand apart from the category of matter, and compel us to rec¬ 
ognize its distinction ? Does not, in short, the purely scientific 
view of mind, as something in experience absolutely apart from all 


JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. * 


151 


other motor forces in the world, lead us up to the theological view 
that mind, as self-conscious, is a singular power—an efflux from a 
higher Source than matter? 

It may be impossible to prove Mind to be what the Christian 
heart believes it to be, and so to infer that the Primal Force or First 
Cause of the Universe must be a Supreme Mind—and nothing less. 
Facts are so far in favor of the theistic hypothesis. So far as expe¬ 
rience extends, Mind cannot be generated from any other or in¬ 
ferior force, or any combination of Matter and Force. On this 
ground the Theist holds it to be mi generis —a Divine particle im¬ 
plying a Divine Author. But even if this cannot be proved, it 
seems evident that a Divine Author or Creative Mind can only be 
• argued on the basis that Mind is something more than any mere 
function of matter. What otherwise comes of the principle of De¬ 
sign?—with which Mr. Mill, no less than the Theist, largely works. 
He is greatly in favor of Design in Creation. Repudiating all other 
evidences of Theism, he thinks that the argument from marks of 
Design in Nature is “of a really scientific character.” He does not 
allow the argument to the extent of the Christian Theist. The 
“marks of Design” appear to him to imply an Evil as well as a 
Good Power, or at least an imperfect Power. There is evidence of 
benevolent Design, but it is also evident he thinks that benevolent 
Design has been hemmed in and hindered by lack of adequate 
power or intractableness of material. But leaving aside the char¬ 
acter of his conclusion, of which we have already said enough, is 
there not a radical weakness at the root of any Design argument in 
his hands? for if mind be a mere quality or outcome of matter, we 
may certainly ask, with Hume, why should it be made “the model 
of the universe?” What right have we to transfer it to natural 
phenomena at all as their explanation? Design is only intelligi¬ 
ble as the purposeful operation of an intelligent will. It is essen¬ 
tially the expression of such a will. And is this not already to own 
an intelligence behind the order of Nature? Does not Theism of 
any kind, in short, even such Theism as Mr. Mill’s, imply a meta¬ 
physical basis—an intelligent will operating behind the changes of 
experience; while a philosophy like Mr. Mill’s, which ab initio de¬ 
nies that there is anything at all behind experience, and makes the 
will itself merely a phenomenon, really leaves no room for Will in 
Nature at all. No analogy of mere experience can enable us to find 
in Nature what we do not recognize in ourselves. The whole fab¬ 
ric of Mr. Mill’s Theism therefore tumbles to the ground. It is 
the old story again of Nullus spiritus in Microcosmo, nullus Deus 
in Macrocosmo. Blot out the Divine in Man, and no Divine can 
be found in Nature. Soul and God are essentially co- relative, 


152 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


and if soul is denied, God, or a Creative Mind, can nowhere be 
found. 

It is remarkable how far Mr. Mill is disposed to recognize Design 
in Nature—as in the formation of the eye, for example. Sight not 
being precedent, but subsequent to the organic structure of the eye, 
this structure can only be explained by an antecedent idea as the 
efficient cause. “And this at once marks the organ as proceeding 
from an intelligent Will. ” But is not the idea of an intelligent Will 
essentially metaphysical? It has no meaning as a mere educt of 
experience. Intelligence may be predicated on a mere basis of 
observation, but an intelligent Will—Mind as a creative or original 
agent—is something deeper than any mere experience, and lies at 
the background of all experience. We cannot play with words in 
this manner; we cannot use ‘ ‘ Design ” and speak of “an intelligent 
will,” and yet maintain a merely phenomenal basis. The distinc¬ 
tion of the two systems of thought is radical, and there is no bind¬ 
ing the two together. Atheism is the consistent result of Phenom¬ 
enalism, and by its very premisses shuts out the Divine both in Man 
and Nature. It holds all life throughout in its everlasting grasp, 
and there is no getting behind it. Because, ex hypothesi, there is 
nothing behind—there is no metaphysic. 

There can hardly be a doubt, therefore, that what were supposed 
to be Mill’s earlier views were the true logical outcome of his mode 
of thought, far more than the pallid Theism propounded by him in 
his posthumous essay, which recognized a Creator, but denied to 
Him either full benevolence or the power to carry his benevolent 
purposes into effect. A God thus limited, whose hand is shortened 
that it cannot save, is no God at all, and no religion worth speaking 
of could rest on such a basis. 

It may be asked, then, What is the value of Mr. Mill’s thinking 
upon religion? Is it not purely negative ? Even if it were so, it 
would claim our attention. The advocates of a thesis can never 
overlook the antithesis, and those who defend it. The very breadth 
of Mr. Mill’s negations and the negations of his school has been of 
service to religious thought. The thoroughness of his logical anal¬ 
ysis on one side has led to a more thorough analysis on the other 
side. The ideas of Order, of Miracle, of Free Will, have, all come 
forth from his searching logic more clear and intelligible. They 
have been set in a higher light, and Christian reason has come to 
see how unworthy were some of its old conceptions on such subjects. 

But Mr. J. S. Mill has not merely done this negative work in re¬ 
ligious thought. He has done much. more. The effect of his thor¬ 
ough-going criticism has been to make clearer than before the roots 
of the great opposing lines of thought on which all higher specula- 


JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


153 


tion rests. In the end, on either side, a postulate stares us in the 
face. Man is either divine from the first—a free spiritual being 
standing apart from all nature—or he is essentially material. On 
the latter basis, no religion in the old sense can be based. All at¬ 
tempts to find spirit in matter, if spirit is not already presupposed 
as prior to matter, is a mere futile imagination. All attempts to 
reach God through Nature, the Unseen through the seen, must nec¬ 
essarily fail. We can never gain from natural law anything but 
some product of that law. Once bring man within the chain of 
causation binding the life of nature, and there is no rational outlet 
towards the Divine. The Divine may be held by Faith as an hy¬ 
pothesis running parallel with the natural; but it cannot in such a 
case be established on any grounds of reason. This result was ap¬ 
parent enough long ago, when Hume delighted to emphasize the 
absolute separation between faith and reason; but it has been sci¬ 
entifically exhibited by Mill. He shrank from the downright athe¬ 
ism to which his principles inevitably lead; but the real drift of 
these principles is nowhere obscure. Determinism in philosophy 
lands in the negation of all religion. Religion may be tacked on 
by faith or superstition to a Determinist Philosophy or Doctrine of 
Necessity; but it cannot be rationally evolved from it. And think¬ 
ers like Baden Powell in our own time, or Chalmers and Jonathan 
Edwards in former times, who attempted to combine Determinism 
with Christianity, have all failed, with whatever power of argument. 
They started from a wrong beginning. The marches between the 
great lines of thought have been thoroughly cleared by help of 
Mill’s logic and other books of the same school. They are not 
likely to be obscured again; and this of itself is to have done a great 
service to religious thought. 

But yet, again, Mill has done service in vindicating everywhere 
the moral side of religion. It was in fact his tendency in all his 
writings to confound morality with religion. Setting aside, as he 
did, the Divine as an imaginary sphere, and yet recognizing so 
strongly the moral and social bonds that make so large a part of 
religion, it was inevitable that he should exalt these human aspects 
of the subject. They were estimated not unduly in themselves, but 
disproportionately in comparison with others. But the very em¬ 
phasis with which our philosopher dwelt on moral attributes in re¬ 
lation to the Divine Being, as well as to human society, was of great 
value. If it tended to bring down religion from heaven to earth, it 
also tended to purge the Heavenly Ideal of ail grosser taint. Noth¬ 
ing could be further from the truth than the picture of the Christian 
God given by both the Mills; but it is not to be denied that there 
lies in all religious systems an inclination to conceive of God more 


154 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


or less after an arbitrary manner, as dealing with mankind on other 
principles than those of pure Morality, notwithstanding that this 
moral conception of the Divine is everywhere supreme in the Gos¬ 
pels. This is a perilous inclination, and not undeserving the indig¬ 
nation it excited in their minds. The famous passage in the “ Exam¬ 
ination ” of Hamilton’s Philosophy, which sent a thrill through many 
Christian hearts, had a tinge in it of that intellectual pride of which 
we have already spoken; but it also breathed a fine moral intensity.* 
Nothing but degradation can come to religion from lowering the 
Divine Ideal beneath the Ideal of the highest good that we can our¬ 
selves conceive. The true ideal of Christian thought is not only 
more real, but more perfect and beautiful than any human ideal 
whatever. 

We have spoken in the main of Mr. John Stuart Mill throughout 
this lecture, and rightly so; for all the special influences of his 
school were concentrated in him. He was himself more than all its 
other members. Two other names, however, claim to be mentioned 
before we close. 

The first of these, Mr. Grote’s, is by itself, and in connection with 
his own special province of Greek literature and history, a great 
name, inferior to none in the nineteenth century. But it has little 
bearing comparatively upon our subject. Mr. George Grote was in 
philosophy and general intellectual spirit the pupil of James Mill. 
He came under his influence about 1819, when Mill was about forty- 
six years of age, in the very height of his intellectual power, and Grote 
himself was twenty-five years of age. Previously he had been de¬ 
voted to his profession (banking) and study, but without showing 


* “If, instead of the ‘glad tidings’ that there exists a Being in whom 
all the excellences which the highest human mind can ever conceive 
exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is 
ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we can¬ 
not learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that the 
highest human morality, which we are capable of conceiving, does not 
sanction them, convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But 
when I am told that I must believe this, and, at the same time, call this 
Being by all the names which express and affirm the highest human 
morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a 
Being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do. He 
shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no Being good who is 
not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and 
if such a Being can sentence me to Hell for not so calling him, to Hell I 
will go.”—“Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,” pp. 
123-4. 



JOHN STUAKT MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


155 


any marked religious or political tendencies. JHis mother is said to 
have been strongly inclined to Calvinistic religion, of which there is 
no trace in the son. Possibly it may have inclined him, by way of 
reaction, as in similar cases, to the opposite principles which he 
soon imbibed. The original bond of union between Mill and Grote 
was Mr. David Ricardo, the well-known political economist, in con¬ 
nection with whose studies the younger mind chiefly sought instruc¬ 
tion at the hands of one whom he felt to be a master. But the as¬ 
cendency of Mill’s influence soon showed itself, not only in such 
subjects, but still more in the views adopted by Grote regarding 
Political Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics. According to Mrs. 
Grote, her husband soon found himself ‘ ‘ enthralled in the circle of 
Mill’s speculations, and after a year or two of intimate commerce 
there existed but little difference in point of opinion between mas¬ 
ter and pupil. The pupil not only imbibed what may be reasona¬ 
bly called the opinions, but no less the prejudices of his master.” 
Mr. Mill entertained a profound feeling against the Established 
Church, and a corresponding dislike of its members, and Mr. Grote 
was carried away in the same “current of antipathy.” There is an 
unconscious irony in Mrs. Grote’s description. She seems to think 
it creditable to her husband, rather than otherwise, that he should 
have shared Mill’s narrow dogmatism and prejudices, no less than 
his reasoned conclusions. 

There is no evidence in Grote’s life, as related by his widow, that 
he himself ever examined the religious problems whose negative 
settlement he accepted with such a curious deference from James 
Mill. Masterly and critical as his intellect was in his own depart¬ 
ments of study, he is a striking example of a common characteristic 
of the course of modern negative speculation. The basis of this 
speculation is professedly inquiry. It is supposed by those whom 
its current has swept away so abundantly in recent times to be the 
result of the irresistible progress of the human intellect. Yet no 
body of religious disciples have ever followed the voice of authority 
with more unhesitating decision than a large proportion of the pro¬ 
fessed army of Modern Unbelief. They have surrendered them¬ 
selves with the most melancholy monotony to the voice of some 
master or other, without any genuine inquiry on their own part, or 
even any knowledge sometimes of the real character of the conclu¬ 
sions from which they dissent. It is, indeed, a pitiful comment on 
the weakness of human nature that the anti-Christendom of modern 
times has reproduced in flagrant forms two of the worst vices of 
Mediaeval Christendom — its intolerance and vulgar deference to 
authority. 

Apparently the negations as to religion into which George Grote’s 


156 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


mind settled thus early, under the teaching of James Mill, never left 
him. He dismissed altogether and with contempt the subject of 
Theology from his mind. The “antipathies of his teacher,” it is 
admitted by Mrs. Grote, “colored his mind through the whole peri¬ 
od of his ripe meridian age, and inspired and directed many of the 
important actions of his life.” This is a somewhat sad confession 
to make, but it is made without any shame, and is, no doubt, honest. 
There was a certain element of loyalty in Grote’s devotion, and a 
certain simplicity—it is impossible to say largeness of mind—in the 
enthusiasm with which he maintained the negations of his early 
creed, and even quarrelled with James Mill’s illustrious son, as being 
a comparatively unfaithful advocate of “the true faith,” according 
to his father. If there are any of John Stuart Mill’s writings more 
nobly creditable to him than others, more marked by luminous and 
truly wise comprehension, it is his two articles on Bentham and Cole¬ 
ridge, which appeared respectively in 1838 and in 1840, in the Lon¬ 
don an<l Westminster Review, and are found in the first volume of 
his collected “ Discussions.” But for the very reason that all open 
minds must admire these writings, they were particularly offensive 
to the “straitest sect” of his father’s school, and to none more so 
than to Grote and his wife. There is an unpleasant revelation on 
this subject—to which we have already adverted—in Dr. Bain’s vol¬ 
ume.* No orthodox teachers at variance on some abstruse point 
of their common divinity could use more disrespectful language to 
one another than Mrs. Grote does in conveying her own and her 
husband’s opinion of what she is pleased, to call ‘ ‘ the stuff and non¬ 
sense ” of these papers. 

Mr. Grote must be pronounced, therefore, more of a Millite than 
John Stuart Mill himself. His attitude in the well-known contro¬ 
versy as to the Chair of Logic in University College in 1866, when 
Dr. James Martineau was a candidate, and was defeated almost en¬ 
tirely by his influence, is an unpleasant illustration of the same ex¬ 
treme tendency. The event is not one on which we are called to 
dwell; but it is highly significant, as showing how thoroughly so 
great an intellect can shut out all the influence of higher religious 
speculation, and intrench itself with undeviating complacency with¬ 
in the narrowest limits on so great a subject. This very intensity 
of negative dogmatism made Grote, to some extent, a power in his 
time even in relation to religion; it is the warrant of our touching 
his career at all in a manner in which we would rather have re¬ 
frained from doing, seeing how great a figure he is otherwise. But 
the limits within which he confined his mind on this subject prove 


* “ J. S. Mill: A Criticism,” pp. 56-57. 





JOHN STUART MILL AND HIS SCHOOL. 


157 


sufficiently that he was not, in any real sense, a teacher, and he can 
hardly be said to have exercised any definite influence on the devel¬ 
opment of religious thought. 

George Henry Lewes was in all respects a different type of man, 
versatile, accomplished, in a sense learned—acute and ingenious as a 
philosophical thinker. We have no means of tracing the growth of 
his negative convictions, but they were fully matured in 1845, when 
the first volume of his “Biographical History of Philosophy” ap¬ 
peared. One of the chief notes of this book—in its earliest and 
latest form alike,* its characteristic note—was its antipathy to phil¬ 
osophical theology, and to all the fundamental conceptions on which 
it rests. Mr. Lewes’s idea of the history of philosophy was very like 
the popular notion of the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet 
missed out. He did not believe in any higher or spiritual thought. 
All metaphysic was to him an absurdity. It was merely “ the art of 
amusing one’s self with method ”— “ Vart de s'egarer avec methode” 
No definition can be wittier or truer, he thought. 

Mr. Lewes had studied John Stuart Mill’s “Logic” and Comte’s 
“ Cours de Philosophic Positive,” and these he accepted as his phil¬ 
osophical Bible. All his earlier teaching—for he assumed in all his 
graver writings more or less the role of a teacher—was drawn from 
those two sources. He originated no special line of thought. He 
was the bold usher of the modern scientific spirit, and his influence 
chiefly consisted in the unalloyed enthusiasm with which he pushed 
its premisses to their legitimate conclusion. His popular ‘ ‘ Exposi¬ 
tion of the Positive Philosophy,” which first appeared in a succes¬ 
sion of papers in the newspaper known as The Leader , probably in¬ 
troduced the name and the principles of Comte for the first time to 
many readers in this country. He had admirable gifts as a writer, 
whatever we may think of his powers as a thinker. His exposition 
was marked by a rare lucidity, and had the charm of interest, even 
when least satisfactory. Much of a Frenchman in many of his ways, 
he had the French gift of facile and happy expression. 

We do not touch Mr. Lewes’s later philosophical writings, begin¬ 
ning with his important work on “ Problems of Life and Mind” in 
1874. They do not come within our present period of review. But 
he was certainly a recognizable factor in the formation of negative 
opinion during the fifth and sixth decades of the century ;f nor is 


* It was first published in four small volumes in Knight’s Shilling Se¬ 
ries, and finally in two large library volumes in 1867. The History was 
greatly enlarged in its latest form. 

t “Mr. Lewes had a letter from a working man at Leicester, who said 



158 


MOVEMENTS OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


there any reason to doubt—doubtful as the fact long remained in 
many minds looking at his earlier writings—that he was a really 
earnest thinker, almost religiously interested in the doctrines he ex¬ 
pounded. Under the persiflage of his style he seems to have hidden 
a laborious and earnest purpose. This is placed beyond doubt by 
the reflected light which the recent life of George Eliot throws upon 
him as her studious companion for so many years. No candid read¬ 
er can refuse to admit—whatever estimate he may otherwise form 
of these volumes—that Lewes’s character and mental ambition both 
appear in a better aspect than many before would have been dis¬ 
posed to regard them. We may differ from him and the principles 
which lay at the root of all his mental work, but he was plainly a 
man who had convictions, and who devoted his life with an increas¬ 
ing devotion to their propagation. He was by no means an origin¬ 
al, nor perhaps, even in his latest efforts, a profound worker in the 
great modern anti-theological school. But at any rate it was not 
out of mere lightness of heart that he joined the army of Negation¬ 
ists. He believed he had something better than any theology to 
give his generation, and if his belief was delusive it was at least no 
unworthy motive that inspired it. 

Christian thought may learn a good deal even from works like 
Lewes’s. There was an admirable directness and lucidity in many 
of his anti-theological arguments. His very exaggerations—as in 
his frequent antitheses of law and will, science and moral freedom 
—served to bring out confusions apt to underlie forms of Christian 
opinion, just as George Eliot’s trenchant exposure of Cummingism 
served to bring out the crudities of popular religion. Thought that 
is really true and well founded never suffers from such exposures. 
Its weaknesses are cast out in the fierce light that is made to beat 
upon it. Whatever it may have to throw away as useless encum¬ 
brance in the conflict, it comes out tried as by fire, and hence purified 
and enlarged in its central and essential principles. 


that he and some fellow-students met together on a Sunday to read the 
book aloud (‘Biographical History of Philosophy’) and discuss it.”— 
“ George Eliot’s Life,” vol. i., p. 467. 



F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


159 


VII. 

FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

It is remarkable within how brief a period all the forces of 
thought which we have reviewed in the preceding lectures were 
comprised. Our earliest starting-point was 1820, when Mr. Erskine’s 
first book was published. But it can hardly be said that there was 
any movement of fresh intelligence in religion till the appearance of 
Coleridge’s “ Aids to Reflection ” in 1825. This third decade of the 
century also marks the rise of the early Oriel School. The next 
decade gives us not only the rise but the decline of the original Ox¬ 
ford movement. Carlyle’s characteristic principles were all worked 
out when he went to London in 1834; and John Stuart Mill, the 
latest factor in the series of movements, had elaborated his Logic 
and his cardinal doctrines by 1843. Even the “BiographicalHisto¬ 
ry of Philosophy,” if it deserves to be mentioned, does not bring us 
later than the year 1845-46. It is true that the modifications of re¬ 
ligious opinion which began with Mr. Erskine and Coleridge had 
still, as we shall see in this lecture, a definite course to run; while 
the negative mode of thought which had set in with the Mills, and 
was diligently propagated by Lewes and others, was far from hay¬ 
ing spent itself. New and fertile developments were awaiting it 
in the writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer and others. But these de¬ 
velopments belong to what may be called the scientific epoch of 
Negativism or Agnosticism, with which our present lectures are not 
concerned. What especially deserves notice at present is the rapidi¬ 
ty with which a crowd of new ideas, which only commenced with 
the end of the first quarter of the century, developed themselves. 
It was 1825 before they had begun to move the national mind; by 
1845 they had not spent their strength, but had attained to their full 
momentum. A period of about twenty years had seen them rise in 
quick succession and grow to their full height. There has been no 
more vital or germinant epoch in the history of British thought. 

The natural result followed. With the significant exception 
which now awaits our attention—there set in a period of sceptical 
languor. The failure of the Oxford movement especially produced 
a strong reaction, which worked powerfully in many minds to the 
distrust of all religious truth. This was the time of which Mr, 


160 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Fronde speaks in his life of Carlyle, when he and a companion band 
of truth-seekers were driven into the wilderness in search of some¬ 
thing in which they could believe—some certainty on which they 
could stand. He and others found a refuge in Carlylism, but many 
found no such refuge. His own early volumes—now rarely met 
with—“The Shadows of the Clouds ” (1847) and the “Nemesis of 
Faith ” (1849); the poems of Clough, who at this time broke away 
from Oxford and resigned his fellowship; the ‘‘ Phases of Faith ” of 
Francis Newman (1849), who then also parted with his early Evan¬ 
gelicalism; the struggles after a higher belief which meet us in the 
lives of Kingsley and Frederick Robertson—all testify to the scep¬ 
tical weariness which in these years overtook many minds of the 
younger generation. No finer spirit than Clough’s was ever wrecked 
on the ocean of doubt, and Frederick Robertson, we shall see, bore 
to the last the impress of the suffering through which he then passed. 
It was in the same years that John Sterling’s faith disappeared; and 
Matthew Arnold’s first poems, with all their divine despair, although 
not published till a later date (1853), were born of the same time of 
spiritual darkness, when the sun of faith went down on so many 
hearts. 

The recent life of George Eliot has served to bring into promi¬ 
nence some of the special disintegrating influences of this time. 
George Eliot herself belongs upon the whole to the later or “ Scien¬ 
tific ” era, which marks itself off from the period now under review. 
It was not till after 1855, and her conjunction with such fellow-work¬ 
ers as Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Lewes, that her unbelief assumed 
a definite form. But she and her friends the Hennells and Brays 
bear ample testimony to the disintegration of belief in the preceding 
decade. An ardent Evangelical in 1840, she had left off her old faith 
in the following year, influenced in the main by a book of Charles 
Hennell’s entitled “An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christian¬ 
ity. ” There is no evidence of her having been attracted by the Ox¬ 
ford Theology; but she had read with interest, and some disturbance 
of thought, Isaac Taylor’s animadversions on that Theology in “An¬ 
cient Christianity ” (August, 1840). Probably the contrast between 
the faith in which she had been brought up and the opinions of 
many of the Fathers was a somewhat harsh awakening to her, and 
while in this state of mind the views presented by the Brays and the 
line of inquiry started by Mr. Hennell laid hold of her, and led her 
in the purely sceptical direction which she followed for the next ten 
y£ars. 

Miss Evans herself, whatever we may think of her conclusions, 
was strong as a sceptic, as in all other respects. There is no weak¬ 
ness in any of her work. Her translation of Strauss, begun in 1843 


F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 161 

and published in 1846, is a masterpiece of its kind, and no less her 
subsequent translation of Feuerbach’s “Essence of Christianity.” 
But the influences that surrounded her in those years were not of a 
high order. The Brays and Hennells were people of more than 
usual intellectuality; but the ‘ ‘ Philosophy of Necessity ” by Charles 
Bray, and Charles Hennell’s “ Inquiry, ” are neither of them very 
profound or interesting books. Mr. Bray reminds us, as a writer, 
of George Combe, and is a less original thinker of the same school. 
He was, as his recent biography shows, full of that singular self¬ 
elation characteristic of second-class intellectual men when they hit, 
as they suppose, upon new veins of thought. Hennell’s volume 
opened a line of inquiry in this country akin to that of Strauss 
and the Tubingen School in Germany. It was translated into Ger¬ 
man under Strauss’s own direction, and is not without a certain bald 
acuteness; but its historical criticism, notwithstanding the commen¬ 
dation of George Eliot, is shallow and meagre—one of its main feat¬ 
ures being the derivative connection of Christianity with the Es- 
senes—a supposition now proved quite baseless,* as indeed, to any 
one who understood either Essenism or Christianity, it was always a 
bad guess. 

Of all the sceptical group which surrounded George Eliot in 
those years there is not one save herself who will be remembered 
for anything that he did. The world had indeed forgotten them 
till brought to life again in her letters. Even Mackay’s “Progress 
of the Intellect,” a work which she much admired, and reviewed for 
the Westminster in 1859, is not only a dull book, but to a large extent 
on false lines. It seems strange that lesser illuminati of this kind, 
known to the world at the time mainly in connection with Mr. Chap¬ 
man the publisher of the Westminster, and the series of anti-Christian 
volumes which issued from his press, should have influenced so 
much as they did a mind like George Eliot’s. Sara Hennell,f not¬ 
withstanding her chaotic style, is the only one besides George Eliot 
herself with any real genius. There is a sense of power in her, in¬ 
articulate as it often is, which explains her long mental association 
with the translator of Strauss and the author of “Romola.” In none 
of them, however—not even in George Eliot—can we trace any large 
knowledge of the Christianity they so readily abandoned, or any 
genuine historic insight into the problem of its origin. The origi¬ 
nality of Christ’s character, in absolute distinction from all else in 


* See Bishop Lightfoot’s elaborate discussion of the subject—“The 
Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians,” p. 114 et seq. 

f Particularly in Sara Hennell’s “Thoughts in Aid of Faith”(1860) 
there are some striking and interesting trains of reflection. 

11 



162 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


the Jewish thought or imagination of the time, is unappreciated. 
The spiritual side of Christianity in its sense of Sin and revelation 
of Divine Pity and forgiveness is unfelt. The transcendency of the 
Divine Life depicted in the Gospels finds no echo in their hearts. 
Religion even to George Eliot is not an inner power of Divine mys¬ 
tery awakening the conscience. It is at best an intellectual exercise, 
or a scenic picture, or a beautiful memory. Her early Evangelical¬ 
ism peeled off her like an outer garment, leaving behind only a rich 
vein of dramatic experience which she afterwards worked into her 
novels. There is no evidence of her great change having produced 
in her any spiritual anxiety. There is nothing indeed in autobiog¬ 
raphy more wonderful than the facility with which this remarkable 
woman parted first with her faith and then with the moral sanctions 
■which do so much to consecrate life, while yet constantly idealizing 
life in her letters, and taking such a large grasp of many of its mor¬ 
al realities. Her scepticism and then her eclectic Humanitarianism 
have a certain benignancy and elevation unlike vulgar infidelity of 
any kind. There are gleams of a higher life everywhere in her 
thought. There is much self-distrust, but no self-abasement. There 
is a strange externality—as if the Divine had never come near to 
her save by outward form or picture—never pierced to any dividing 
asunder of soul and spirit. Amid all her sadness—and her life 
upon the whole is a very sad one—there are no depths of spiritual 
dread (of which dramatically—as in “ Romola”—she had yet a vivid 
conception), or even of spiritual tenderness. We do not look to 
minds of this stamp—into which the arrows of conscience make 
only slight wounds—for a true estimate of Christianity either in its 
Divine character or origin. 

But among all the scepticism of this time, and in direct connection 
with it, there arose a new and powerful religious influence. This 
has received the name of the “Broad Church”movement, and, for 
the sake of convenience, we shall use the expression. It is necessary, 
however, to say that the name is not only apt to mislead, but was 
entirely disowned by the chief theologian to whom, with others, 
popular usage has applied it. As late as 1860 Mr. Maurice says that 
he does not know what “Broad Church'’ means, but that if it means 
anything it must apply to followers of the Whately school —of 
which he was certainly not one. He was, beyond all doubt, right 
in this. Mr. Maurice’s great deficiency as a theologian, as we shall 
have occasion to point out, is just his deficiency in certain critical 
qualities that belonged to Whately and others, and gave an historic 
breadth to many of their conclusions. But the name “Broad 
Church’’lias also come to denote a species of universalism — or 


F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


163 


breadth of doctrinal sentiment—which was not only not at variance 
with Mr. Maurice’s standpoint, but may be held characteristic of the 
men to whom it is commonly applied. 

The name “ Broad Church”is said to have been first used by 
Dean Stanley in an article in the Edinburgh Review in July, 1850, on 
the Gorham controversy. His words were to the effect that the 
Church of England was “by the very condition of its being neither 
High nor Low, but Broad.” In the original use of the word, there¬ 
fore, there was no intention of characterizing any party. The mean¬ 
ing rather was that the Church of England was of no party, and 
embraced by its constitution and history all the different sides of 
spiritual truth. In this sense the name would not have been repu¬ 
diated, but would nave been willingly accepted by Mr. Maurice.* 
His whole teaching was a, protest against party spirit or sectarian¬ 
ism of every kind. A few years after Dean Stanley's article, how¬ 
ever, there appeared in the same review* a striking paper by Mr. 
Conybeare on “Church Parties,”and here the name was distinctly 
applied in a party sense as denoting a succession of Liberal no less 
than Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical teachers, which have always 
prevailed within the English Church. This is the historic and best 
sense of the word, if it is to be used in a party sense at all. It will 
be apparent, as we proceed, how far Maurice and Kingsley are right¬ 
ly identified with the great succession of liberal thinkers in the 
Church of England. 

Maurice’s early associations identify him with the broadest prin¬ 
ciples of the Church of England. No less than his friend Sterling 
he was an admiring student of Coleridge, and deeply indebted to 
his writings. Mr. John Stuart Mill welcomed them both as Cole- 
ridgians to the debates in which he delighted in 1826. In those 
debates Maurice himself tells us that “he defended Coleridge’s 
metaphysics ” against the utilitarians. He elsewhere says that Cole- 
ridgef had done much to preserve him from infidelity. In dedi¬ 
cating the second edition of his first work, “The Kingdom of 
Christ,” to Mr. Derwent Coleridge, he speaks at length of his in¬ 
debtedness to his father, while at the same time saying that he had 
never enjoyed the privilege of personal intercourse with him, and 
offering certain criticisms on his writings. To the “Aids to Re¬ 
flection ” especially he expresses “deep and solemn obligations.” 


* This is plain from his own language in speaking of the English 
Church being broad enough to comprehend persons so unlike as Whately 
and Julius Hare, meaning thereby, as he is careful to explain, that “she 
can claim their talents and different qualities of mind for her service.” 
f “Life,” vol. i.,p. 177. 




164 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Whatever other influences, therefore, affected Maurice, he struck 
his mental roots deeply in Coleridge. Not only so; but in contrast 
to his friend John Sterling, he never abandoned the impulse thus 
communicated to him. He remained Coleridgian in the basis of 
his thought. It was the Coleridgian movement, under whatever 
modifications, that he and Kingsley really carried forward. The 
life of Coleridge’s thought survived the ecclesiastical turmoil of the 
fourth decade of the century, and the scepticism that followed, till 
it emerged strong again in their hands. It became a new birth of 
religion in many of the stronger minds of the age when Anglicanism 
was discredited and for a time in arrest, and Evangelical Christian¬ 
ity had sunk into such teaching as that of Dr. Cumming and the 
slanderous orthodoxy of the Record. It was the virtue of what has 
been called ‘ ‘ Broad Churchism ” that it attracted such minds. It 
came as a religious power to them, when the power of religion was 
at ebb-tide in other directions. Maurice and Kingsley and Fred¬ 
erick Robertson became the religious teachers of a generation in 
danger of forgetting religion altogether. They were strong while 
others were comparatively weak. Tennyson himself, in the whole 
spirit of his poetry, is the sufficient evidence of this powerful wave 
of religious tendency, and its ascendency over the higher minds of 
the time. “Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,” might be taken 
as the key-note of the movement, and the closing verse of “In Me- 
moriam ” as a summary of its thought— 

“That God which ever lives and loves, 

One God, one law, one element, 

And one far-off Divine event 
To which the whole creation moves.” * * 

While Coleridge formed the basis of Maurice’s thought, there 
were other and powerful influences of a peculiar kind that min¬ 
gled in his religious culture. Few men have had a stranger 
religious up-bringing. His father was a Unitarian minister of 
the tolerant unaggressive type, which preceded Priestley and Bel- 
sham, a man of varied culture, and self-sacrificing if not zealous 
life. Calmly restful in his own convictions, he was content to 
preach the great moralities and duties of religion, as was customary 


* See other verses still more significant of the “ Broad Church ” point 
of view, liv., lv., lvi., and the well-known lines— 

* “ Our little systems have their day; 

They have their day and cease to be : 

They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.” 



F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


165 


in his time. His enthusiasm went out, like that of so many others 
of his class, into politics rather than religion. He would have been 
glad to lead a peaceful, busy, religious life after his own fashion, 
farming, preaching, and keeping a school for boys. He was devoted 
to the good of his children, and worked hard for them, but all the 
while a singular trial was preparing for him in the bosom of his 
own family. His elder daughters (there were three older than 
Frederick), and then his wife, abandoned his Unitarian creed, and 
withdrew from his ministry. They wrote to him that they could 
no longer “ attend a Unitarian place of worship,” or even “ take the 
Communion with him.” The picture, as presented by Colonel Mau¬ 
rice, is a very painful one, on which we would rather not comment. 
If there was any type of religious thought more obnoxious than 
another to the Unitarian father and minister, it was Calvinism, yet 
to Calvinism they all betook themselves, though by different roads. 
Each daughter “ took up a position peculiar to herself.” The eldest 
joined the Church of England; the second (Anne) became a Baptist 
under Mr. Foster, the famous Essayist; and Mary, the third, was 
not ‘ ‘ exactly in sympathy with either of the others. ” After various 
experiences, however, she also joined the Church of England, as 
all the younger members of the family seem to have done. This 
strongly marked religious individualism—an inheritance from the 
mother—explains a good deal in Mr. Maurice. No man could be in 
a sense less self-asserting than he was. His shy humility was from 
early years a marked feature of his character. But along with an 
almost morbid self-depreciation there was also from the first—cer¬ 
tainly from the time that he turned his thoughts to the Church—an 
intense spirit of religious confidence. Generalizing from his own 
family experiences, he was led to certain conclusions which he held 
as absolute truths. These conclusions were entirely unlike those to 
which his sisters and mother had come. But they were held with the 
same tenacity and disregard of consequences. If more enlightened, 
they were not the less downright. When his mother assured her 
astonished husband that “Calvinism was true” she said what her 
son would never have said—but the spirit of the saying may be 
traced in many of his utterances. 

More than this, the singular bigotry of his sisters—we cannot give 
it any lesser name—re-appears in at least one act of his life—his re- 
baptism at the age of twenty-six, when he at length finally joined 
the Church of England, and began to prepare for her ministry. 
This is a truly painful incident in Mr. Maurice’s career—of itself 
enough to show how far he was from theologians of the Whately 
and historical Latitudinarian school. What would any of them, 
Bishop Butler, or Tenison, or even Tait in our own time, have 


166 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


thought of such an act? If the baptismal rite of his father—always, 
as we are told, performed “in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost ’’—was not enough, what made it not 
enough? His father’s imperfect faith. But is the efficacy of a rite 
to be judged by the precise faith of the celebrant? Or was the rite 
only efficacious in the Church of England? But what was this but 
to fall into the worst error he attributed to Dr. Pusey and the Tract- 
arians? “I think I was directed to do it by the Holy Spirit,” is 
all he says in defence of the act in a letter to one of his sisters. But 
what is this but an assertion of his own private judgment in a form 
which admits of no answer? 

In addition to the influence of Coleridge and of his own peculiar 
family experiences, there was a third and very important factor in 
the formation of Maurice’s theology. If Coleridge laid the founda¬ 
tion, and the strong religious individualism which he inherited gave 
direction to his thought, it ultimately took much of its form from 
Mr. Erskine’s writings and the theology in Scotland with which 
Mr. Erskine was identified. It is difficult to fix the precise period 
when Mr. Erskine’s mode of thinking began to touch Mr. Maurice; 
but very early in his career, before he had turned his attention to 
theology as a study, it was brought under his notice in connection 
with his mother’s religious difficulties and his own painful feelings 
arising therefrom. For a time, and while still a youth, these diffi¬ 
culties so clouded his own mind that he wrote to a lady in an ex¬ 
tremely gloomy tone as to his own spiritual condition and pros¬ 
pects.* The lady was a friend of Mr. Erskine, whose first book 
had then appeared, and she replied questioning his authority for 
the dark suggestion he had made of his being destined to misery, 
here and hereafter. Her argument was exactly in the spirit of Mr. 
Erskine, and obviously impressed him. Later, when at Oxford in 
1830, he formed the acquaintance of Mr. Bruce, afterwards Lord 
Elgin, Governor-general of India, and through him became directly 
acquainted with Mr. Erskine’s books, notably at the time with the 
volume entitled “The Brazen Serpent,”which produced a very im¬ 
portant effect upon his mind. Long afterwards, in an autobio¬ 
graphical letter written for his son,f he says of the impressions he 
then received, “I was led to ask n^self what a Gospel to mankind 
must be; whether it must not have some other ground than the fall 
of Adam, and the sinful nature of man. I was helped much in 
finding an answer to the question by Mr. Erskine’s books—I did 
not then know him personally—and by the sermons of Mr. Camp¬ 
bell. The English Church I thought was the witness for that uni- 


* “Life,” vol. i., p. 43. 


+ In 1878. 




F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 16V 

versal redemption which the Scotch Presbyterians had declared to 
be incompatible with their confessions.”* 

From this time onward he was deeply pondering the prospect 
before him of becoming a minister in the Church of England, 
which he became three years later, f All the influences which had 
mingled in his life continued to work powerfully, and none more 
so than the larger view of the Gospel, which was opened to him as 
he believed in Mr. Erskine’s writings. In letters to his father and 
mother he explains at length “the firmly fixing basis” of his 
thoughts; and it may truly be said, as is virtually said by his son, 
that he never swerved from this basis. There are few, even of his 
after controversies, the germs of which cannot be found in these 
letters. He was already nearly thirty years of age, and multiplied 
as were his subsequent activities, the position in which he now 
stood when he began his ministry was the position in which he ah 
ways stood. Let us endeavor then, if we can, to state this position 
clearly. Of all writers there is none to whose fundamental princi¬ 
ple it is more necessary to get an initial clew than to Mr. Maurice’s. 
Even with such a clew his marvellous subtlety is often evasive, 
without it, it is hopeless to read a coherent meaning into his several 
writings and controversies. 

There are at least two fundamental principles that lie at the basis 
of all his thought. The first and most important of these, as well 
as the most pervading, is nowhere more clearly expressed than in 
a letter to his mother at this time (December, 1833). His mother, 
as we have already seen, had embraced with his elder sisters an ex¬ 
treme type of Calvinism. She had done so, however, like Cowper, 
without deriving any comfort from her supralapsarian doctrine. 
Believing in Election as absolutely fixed, she could not yet realize 
that she was one of the Elect. A more painful state of mind can 
hardly be imagined. His mother’s spiritual distress was a constant 
pain to the son, while it increased his love and reverence for her. 
It was especially painful in the light of the larger views that he be¬ 
lieved had come to himself. Nay, how far may those larger views 
not have been welcome to him as a reaction from the narrow and 
dreadful doctrine which had fascinated the minds of both his moth¬ 
er and sisters, and even for a time thrown a shadow over himself? 
In any case it is against the background of such a doctrine that he 
draws out the great antithetic principle on which all his own theol¬ 
ogy lay—the principle it may be called of “universal redemption.” 
We use this expression because it is used by himself. But like many 
general expressions it is misleading and indefinite. It is necessary 


* “Life,” vol. i., p. 183. 


t In January, 1834. 




168 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


to clear it up, therefore, in his own language, if not exactly his own 
order of expression. “Now, my dearest mother,” he says, “you 
wish or long to believe yourself in Christ, but you are afraid to do 
so, because you think there is some experience that you are in him 
necessary to warrant that belief. Now if any man, or an angel from 
heaven, preach this doctrine to you, let him be accursed. You have 
this warrant for believing yourself in Christ, that you cannot do one 
loving act, you cannot obey one of God’s commandments, you can¬ 
not pray, you cannot hope, you cannot love if you are not in Him. 

. . . What then do I assert? Is there no difference between the be¬ 
liever and the unbeliever? Yes, the greatest difference. But the dif¬ 
ference is not about the fact, but precisely in the belief of the fact. 
God tells us ‘ In Him, that is in Christ, I have created all things, 
whether they be in heaven or on earth. Christ is the head of every 
man. ’ Some men believe this, some men disbelieve it. Those men 
who disbelieve it walk after the flesh. They do not believe that 
they are joined to an Almighty Lord of Life—One who is mightier 
than the world, the flesh, and the devil—One who is nearer to them 
than their own flesh. . . . But though tens of hundreds of thousands 
of men so live, we are forbidden by Christian truth and the Catholic 
Church to call this the real state of any man. The truth is that 
every man is in Christ; the condemnation of every man is that he 
will not own the truth —he will not act as if it were true that except 
he were joined to Christ he could not think, breathe, live a single 
hour.”* 

Here, in these emphatic words to his mother, we get to the heart 
of Mr. Maurice’s theology. It is the very antithesis of that of his 
mother. Men generally, she believed, were not related to Christ. 
Man, as man merely, was “under the wrath and curse of God.” 
With him, on the contrary, man is divinely created in Christ from 
the first. Man, as man, is the child of God.f He does not need “to 
become a child of God,” he needs only to recognize the fact that he 
already is such. 

Maurice’s quarrel with the popular theology through all his life 
was mainly on this fundamental ground. It taught, he supposed, 
whether in the form of High Church Anglicanism or Calvinism, 
that man had “to become a child of God.” Instead of beginning 
with the divine constitution of man in Christ, it began with the 
fallen evil condition of man out of which Christ came to redeem his 
people, and so went wrong radically from the first. In one case 
man was represented as becoming a child of God by baptism, in the 


* “ Life r ” vol.i., pp. 155-6. 
t See “Erskine’s Letters,” vol. ii., p. 322. 



F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


169 


other by conscious conversion. The theology of the Bible and of 
the Catholic creeds was in his view against these extremes alike. 
Both were untrue; but popular Protestantism still more so than 
Anglicanism. He himself was “ never a Calvinist,” as his son truly 
says, although its shadow passed over him. He had certain affinities 
with it, especially with the manner in which—in contrast, as he sup¬ 
posed, with Arminianism—it sets forth God and not man,* * * § in the 
forefront of salvation. He also appreciated its strong grasp of 
moral realities. But all that was cardinal in his own theology was 
opposed to it. On the other hand, it seemed for a time as if he 
might have been caught in the High Church enthusiasm which pre¬ 
vailed just after he began his ministry. The High Church party 
had certain hopes of him at first, so much so that they did what they 
could in the beginning of 1837 to promote his election to the Chair 
of Political Economy at Oxford. They recognized his spiritual 
genius, and they were grateful for the help he had given them by 
his pamphlet “Subscription no Bondage.” But Dr. Pusey’s tract 
on “Baptism” drove him from their side. He recurs over and over 
again to the pain this tract gave him. Baptism was, as may be 
imagined, a sensitive point with Maurice. Much of his argument 
in his first book, “The Kingdom of Christ,” turns upon its true 
meaning. He attached infinite importance to it as “ the sign of ad¬ 
mission into a spiritual and universal kingdom grounded upon our 
Lord’s incarnation ” (of which he considered the Church of England 
the true representative). But the doctrine of an opus operatum was 
peculiarly repulsive to him. It implied the subversion of his fun¬ 
damental principle still more than the necessity of conscious conver¬ 
sion, for it presupposed the communication of a new nature in¬ 
stead of the recognition of an original and real relation. In his own 
words it converted a sacrament into an event, f To him this was 
the destruction of the spiritual life and of the idea of the Church as 
a communion of self-renunciation and holy discipline. 

The second great principle which may be said to lie at the foun¬ 
dation of Maurice’s thought was his desire for unity.}: He was 
“haunted all his life,” he says, “by this desire.” He had seen the 
evils of disunion in his father’s family. He thought he could also 
trace there the true secret of unity. In a letter as early as 1834: § 
‘ ‘ I would wish to live and die for the assertion of this truth: that the 
universal Church is just as much a reality as any particular nation is; 


* “Erskine’s Letters,” vol. ii., p. 93. 

t “ Kingdom of Christ,” vol. i., p. 428. 

X “Life,” vol. i., p. 41; vol. ii., p. 632. 

§ Ibid., vol. i., p. 166. 



170 


MOVEMENTS OE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


that the Church is the witness for the true constitution of man as 
man, a child of God, an heir of heaven, and taking up his pardon by 
baptism; that the world is a miserable accursed rebellious order 
which denies this foundation, which will create a foundation of 
self-will, choice, taste, opinion; that in the world there can be no 
communion; that in the Church there can be universal communion 
—communion in one body by one spirit. For this our Church of 
England is now, as I think, the only firm consistent witness.” So 
thought also the Newmanites. With them too — with Newman 
himself in particular—the note of unity was ultimately the govern¬ 
ing note in the idea of the Church. But the ideas of unity were en¬ 
tirely different in the two cases. Newman and his followers sought 
unity in a great external organism, uniform in doctrine, government, 
and worship. All outside of this organism was heretical and schis¬ 
matic, and so, as Maurice thought, in the very effort to reach unity 
they restricted and endangered it. They imperilled the very thing 
they so much prized. The true idea, according to him, was to be 
found not in any negations or hard lines of demarcation indicating 
the true Church, but in the conciliation of what was positive in all 
Christians, and the rejection of their negations. This was how his 
peculiar family experience worked. Divided as his sisters were, 
they were in the substance of their faith united. It was their nega¬ 
tions alone that divided them. In their affirmations they were at 
one. And so, out of the training of his home, as he himself ad¬ 
mits,* there came the very depth of his belief in that which he de¬ 
clared to be “the centre of all his belief.” He sought everywhere 
in the positive side of thought a source of unity very much on the 
old principle attributed to Leibnitz, and laid down by J. S. Mill in 
his paper on Coleridge, “that thinking people w T ere for the most 
part right in what they affirmed, wrong in what they denied. ” In 
similar language Maurice says of the Anglo-Catholics, “I sometimes 
feel a longing desire to set them right when I think they are misap¬ 
prehending or frightening away sincere dissenters; to say * you 
need not weaken one of your assertions, you may make them strong¬ 
er, and yet by just this or that little alteration give them a (really) 
Catholic instead of an exclusive form.’” Again his pupil, Mr. 
Strachey, makes the principle very clear, writing of Maurice’s views 
on Baptism.! “His object,” he says (and this is his method on all 
subjects), “ is to show that in each of the party views there is a great 
truth asserted, that he agrees with each party in the assertion, and 
maintains that it cannot defend them too strongly; but he says each 


* “Life,” vol.,i.,p.41. 
t Ibid., p. 203. 



F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 171 

is wrong when it becomes the denier of the truth of the others, and 
when it assumes its portion of the truth to be the whole.” 

This principle, that true Catholicity lay in leaving aside negations 
and bringing together the positive aspects of truth, entered deeply 
into Maurice’s whole turn of thinking. Applied to religion in gen¬ 
eral, and not merely to different parties within the Christian Church, 
it is the germ of the higher thought of one of his best books, ‘ ‘ The 
Religions of the World,” to which many young thinkers were in¬ 
debted nearly forty years ago (1847), before so much was known as 
now upon the subject. It runs through all his most elaborate work, 
“Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.” It was always springing 
up as a genial and fertile seed in his varied life of thought and con¬ 
troversy. It has a latitudinarian side, and to many minds will seem 
inseparable from the ordinary idea which would make room within 
the Church for a variety of opinions. But this was not Maurice’s 
interpretation of his own principle. He had no patience with the 
inclusion of “all kind of opinions.” This is of the nature of pro¬ 
fane liberalism. Unity must come from the centre—Christ. On 
this positive ground all may unite, but there can be no union other¬ 
wise. Christ, as being the head of every man, is the centre of uni¬ 
versal fellowship, and there is no other centre. And so the two 
main principles with which he worked run into one another. They 
are not independent but interdependent principles. He expresses 
this plainly in the following very characteristic passage: “If the 
person whom I then meet fraternizes elsewhere on another principle, 
that is nothing to me. But if the same person said to me, ‘ Let us 
meet to-morrow at some meeting of the Bible Society: I am an In¬ 
dependent, or a Baptist, or a Quaker; you, I know, are an Episco¬ 
palian; but let us forget our differences and meet on the ground of 
our common Christianity,’ I should say instantly, I will do no such 
thing. I consider that your whole scheme is a flat contradiction 
and a lie. You come forward with the avowal that you fraternize 
on some other ground than that of our union in Christ, and then 
you ask me to fraternize with you on that ground. I consider your 
sec ts—one and all of them—as an outrage on the Christian principle, 
as a denial of it. And what is the common Christianity which you 
speak of? The mere caput mortuum of all systems. You do not 
really mean us to unite in Christ as. being members of his^body; 
you mean us to unite in holding certain notions about Christ. * 

Here again we get to the very core of Mr. Maurice’s thought— 
his strange mixture of universalism and yet dogmatism—of gener¬ 
ousness and yet severity. He could embrace all men in his Chiis- 


* “ Life,” vol. i., pp. 258-59. 




172 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


tian charity, hut they must not bring their opinions to him to be 
tolerated. His own faith does not rest on any opinion or ‘ ‘ notions, ” 
as he maintains, but on certain divine facts. That Christ was the 
essential ground of all human life; that man is created in him from 
the first, and has only to recognize his creative birthright; that all 
men being thus equally in Christ are members of his body, united 
in his fellowship, if they will only own the ground of their common 
life—these were not opinions with him, they were of the nature of 
facts admitting of no question. They run through all his theology- 
They re-appear in sermons, essays, and treatises. They furnish the 
key to most of his work as a Christian philanthropist as well as a 
Christian preacher. His profound faith in them moulds all his 
thought, philosophical as well as religious, explains his views about 
creeds, about the Church, about sects; his indignation alike at the 
Record and at Mansel’s Bampton Lectures. 

There never was a more mistaken idea of any man than that 
which associated Maurice with a negative or half-believing theology. 
He was the most positive if not the most definite of thinkers. He 
was essentially affirmative, starting from Christ as the great affirma¬ 
tion both of thought and life. Man only finds himself in Christ, 
only finds his brother there; the true life of the individual, of the 
family, of the nation, of the Church, all come from the same centre 
and rest on it. The Catholic creeds witness to this Divine reality 
in all its comprehensive meaning; he can see nothing in them but 
this glorious witness. Their very negations become glorified in the 
light of this faith. The Scriptures everywhere speak with the same 
voice. Scholar and thinker as he was, no man was ever less of a 
purely historical critic. He saw everywhere a reflection of his fa¬ 
vorite ideas. No Alexandrian divine of the second or third century 
—no Evangelical or Anglican traditionalist of later times, ever dealt 
more arbitrarily with the development of Divine Revelation, or im¬ 
posed his own meanings more confidently on Patriarchs and Proph¬ 
ets. His vivid faith in the Divine—the strength of his root-convic¬ 
tions, amounting to a species of infallibility—made him see from 
Genesis to Revelation only the same substance of Divine dogma. 

Maurice’s theology was therefore profoundly dogmatic. It was 
wide, generous, in a sense universal, but it took its rise in positive 
principles of the most absolute kind. He is often accused of hazi¬ 
ness and uncertainty. His idea of God was supposed by Dr. 
Candlish to vanish in a mere mist of “ Charity ” which left no room 
for a Moral Governor of the universe. There is a certain ground 
for this assertion when we examine the details of his theological 
system; but no theological system could rest more on certain great 
propositions, which were, as we have said, of the nature of facts 


F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


173 


rather than propositions to Maurice himself. They were realistic 
in the highest degree, like the general ideas of Platonism. He sup¬ 
posed himself to have a far greater regard for facts than Coleridge; * 
but his very facts were realized abstractions rather than objective 
certainties. 

There was beyond doubt a certain analogy between the school 
which gathered around Mr. Maurice and that of the Cambridge 
Platonists in the seventeenth century. It is not only that many 
common ideas lay at the root of their thinking, but they had many 
of the same personal excellences and defects. They had the same 
elevation, the same wide tolerance. and charity, the same ideal en¬ 
thusiasm, but also something of the same esoteric character, the 
same consciousness that they were a group by themselves, pursuing 
a common object. With all his hatred of sects Maurice had some¬ 
thing in him not indeed of the spirit of the Sectary (no man could 
be freer from all the baser qualities which that name denotes), but 
of the spirit of an inner brotherhood. He and those who worked 
with him were all more or less a “peculiar people,” with special 
sympathies and special aims in common. This same spirit is rife 
in the Cambridge Platonists, and one of the “notes” of the group. 
But in a far higher respect they had also much in common. The 
truly great work of the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth 
century was apologetic and not dogmatic. This was also the spe¬ 
cial mission of Maurice and his school. They advanced theological 
inquiry by their rational spirit—their openness to intellectual move¬ 
ment on all sides—their fearless assertion of the rights of Theology 
in the face of Modern Science, more than in any other way. Just 
as Cudworth and More were the living witnesses to the Divine rea¬ 
sonableness of Christianity against the fashionable Empiricism of 
their day, so Maurice and Kingsley, in the midst of an atmosphere 
of low-breathed Scepticism on one side and of mere formal theology 
on the other, were witnesses for a Christianity which had nothing 
to fear from the progress of Knowledge. To the unbelief and tra¬ 
ditionalism of their time they presented a lofty front of Christian 
ideality—-a re-assertion of Divine fact—of man’s essential Divinity 
in Christ, as lying at the basis of all true thought. 

This, as it appears to us, is the true point of view from which 
to regard the early Broad Church movement. It was essentially a 
reconstructive movement of Christian ideas which were losing their 
hold on contemporary minds. Evangelicalism for the time had lost 
its power. Anglicanism was passing through a crisis. The mo¬ 
ment of creative influence was gone for both. As Kingsley says 


* “Life,” vol. i., p. 203. 






174 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


in one of his letters,* “Decent Anglicanism and decent Evangeli¬ 
calism were each playing the part of Canute to the tide rising 
around them. Men were despairing both of the religion and the 
social life of the country.” The real struggle was no longer, as in 
the preceding decade, “between Popery and Protestantism, but be¬ 
tween Atheism and Christ. ” This may or may not be an exagger¬ 
ated picture, but it was the picture that presented itself to many 
living and strong men like Kingsley just entering upon his career 
in 1846. It was the aspect in which he and many others saw the 
world around them. 

In such circumstances the Maurice - Kingsley school elaborated 
their thought and took up their work. Under similar pressure as 
to whether Christianity remained any longer living, we shall see 
that Frederick Kobertson spent his noble energies as a Christian 
preacher. It is as Christian Apologists, therefore, that they ought 
to be viewed and estimated in the history of modern religious 
thought. Unhappily they were taken by the old orthodox school 
for the most part differently. The prophetic side of their character 
and work, their truly divine insight, their living hold of the Divine 
Constitution of man and the world, were overlooked, and all the 
details of their theology polemically examined—examined and con¬ 
demned from a point of view which they themselves deliberately 
rejected. It was Mr. Maurice’s aim, in view of the half Christian 
or wholly materialized forms of thought around him, to reconstruct 
the Christian ideal that it might take its place once more in the hu¬ 
man heart as the only power by which men can live and die. This 
was what he sought after more than anything else. It was the aim 
in which he succeeded so far as he succeeded at all. His teaching 
came as a new life-blood to many who could accept neither Angli¬ 
canism nor Evangelicalism. It gave them a Divine Philosophy by 
which they could work. It helped them not only to believe in God, 
but to realize God as the fact of facts, and Christ as “Strong Son 
of God, immortal Love,” the “Divine Archetype of Humanity,” in 
whom all human well-being lies. But the religious world, so far 
from being grateful for this service, for the most part assailed 
him and those who agreed with him as dangerous teachers. They 
looked upon them as imperilling the Ark of God rather than rally¬ 
ing to its defence. 

The case cannot be more clearly put than in relation to Maurice’s 
Essays, and the painful discussions which they raised. In these 
Essays Mr. Maurice was thinking, as he tells us, of the Unitarians. 
It was his aim to convince the Unitarians that if they held to Christ 


* “Life,” vol. i., p. 143. 



F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


175 


and Christianity at all they must hold to them in a deeper sense 
than they did. Christ is more than they professed to own if he is 
the Christ at all—the manifestation of the Father—the revealer of 
His will and character to man. The author may or may not have 
been successful in his aim and argument. But, at any rate, the 
issues which were raised against him by Dr. Candlish and others 
were irrelevant issues. They virtually came to this: But you are 
utterly wrong in so far as you disagree with the old Theology, and 
fail to recognize that God is the Moral Governor of the universe as 
well as the Creator and Father of men, and that in order to uphold 
the great principles of his government sin must be dealt with quite 
differently from what you suppose, and the offices and the work of 
Christ quite differently conceived. The hostile critics were right 
in many respects. They were able to make many points against 
Mr. Maurice in the light of the Puritan theology. But then it was 
not the Puritan theology that Mr. Maurice was thinking of. He 
had deliberately set aside Calvinism at the outset of his ministry. 
He could find no life for his own soul either in the Evangelical or 
the Anglican tradition. It was not the theology of either, but the¬ 
ology itself that he was contending for. He was thinking of those 
who had not got the length of St. Paul, still less of Calvin—who 
did not see God as he did in the light of a Father at all, and who, 
however they might reverence Christ, did not recognize in him any 
kind of a Saviour. 

Even if it were true that Mr. Maurice’s theology fell short of the 
Puritan, or even of the Pauline theology, it would by no means fol¬ 
low that it was to be reprobated as these critics reprobated it. If 
it did rest, as some of them contended, on Platonic or Neo-Platonic 
forms of thought, it may be asked, Did it do so more than the the¬ 
ology of Clement of Alexandria and Origen; and must we deem 
these teachers less Christian because they adopted certain ideas of 
Platonism in the expression of Christian doctrine? What ancient 
theologian did not do so? Is Tertullian more orthodox than Clem¬ 
ent, or St. Augustine than Gregory of Nazianzus? Is St. John not a 
quite different type of theologian from St. Paul, and St. James from 
either? And even so, is Mr. Maurice less Christian as a theologian 
because he does not speak in the same language or expound the 
same idefis as those which belong to a wholly different school? 

If I am asked to pronounce an opinion I must often agree with 
his orthodox critics against Mr. Maurice. Sin is certainly more than 
selfishness, and the atonement more than the perfect surrender of 
self-will to God. It is a satisfaction of Divine justice as well as a 
surrender to Divine love. God is not merely Love but Law, and 
Divine righteousness is strong not merely to make men righteous 




176 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


but to punish all unrighteousness. If it be a question between the 
Maurician theology and the Pauline theology, there can be no 
doubt that there are elements in the latter, the full significance of 
which Mr. Maurice failed to see. But then there are no less ele¬ 
ments in the popular theology which St. Paul would have disowned, 
and St. John certainly not have understood. The idea that theol¬ 
ogy is a fixed science, with hard and fast propositions partaking of 
the nature of infallibility, is a superstition which cannot face the 
light of modern criticism. 

The true attitude of the Christian thinker to Maurice and his 
teaching is that of gratitude and not of controversial cavil. He be¬ 
came a power in the spiritual world when other powers were com¬ 
paratively inoperative. Whatever may have been the errors of his 
theology, they were errors of Divine excess. Instead of minimizing 
man’s relation to the Divine, he emphasized it. It required this 
note of emphasis to draw men’s thoughts to theology at all, and to 
make it once more a factor in human thought and life. In adopt¬ 
ing such a line of argument I am aware that I am doing what Mau¬ 
rice himself would not have done. He was too intensely dogmatic 
in his own convictions to accept any explanation of the peculiarities 
of his creed. His creed was, as he always maintained, the Church’s 
creed. He was not content to be tolerated. He was right. Other 
theologians were wrong. His intense spiritual activity, his theo¬ 
logical courage, came out of his unwavering dogmatism. He would 
have repudiated, therefore, any apology for the peculiarities of his 
dogmatic system arising out of the circumstances of his time and 
the character of his own education. But while I feel bound so far 
to vindicate his position as a Christian thinker, I am not bound to 
do so on his own terms. I can see how his dogmatic position arose, 
and what force there was in it in a time of materialistic scepticism, 
but I also see wherein it was undue and one-sided. My business is 
to judge him, and the other thinkers who have passed under our re¬ 
view, historically and not dogmatically. I can acknowledge, there¬ 
fore, what was good in his theology without accepting it; I feel 
bound to set forth his value as a Christian thinker without agreeing 
with him. If there is one lesson more than another that the study 
of Christian opinion enforces, it is how far men, equally Christian, 
may differ in theological opinion, nay—how inevitably in the prog¬ 
ress of thought theology, like philosophy, changes its point of view 
without losing its essential Christian character. It is but a poor 
weapon to fight with when you disagree with a theologian, to tell 
him he is no longer a Christian, It is a weapon, moreover, which 
can be too easily exchanged in conflict. Both Maurice and Kings¬ 
ley were really, as Bunsen said of them, exponents of “ the deepest 



F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


177 


elements ” of contemporary religious thought, and it was this, and 
nothing less than this, that gave them their significance and influ¬ 
ence. 

But it is now more than time to sum up certain facts of Maurice’s 
life, and to glance at his relations with Kingsley, in so far as they 
illustrate the movement associated with their names. Maurice’s 
theology was virtually complete from the outset of his career as a 
clergyman. A student first at Cambridge (1823-26), and then at Ox¬ 
ford (1829-32), he spent the interval in London as editor first of the 
London Literary Chronicle , and then of the Athencmm, with which 
the Literary Chronicle was united (1828). His great abilities had 
been recognized at Cambridge. He was the inspiring spirit there 
of a society called the “Apostles’ Club;” and. there is an interesting 
letter from Arthur Hallam to Mr. Gladstone in June, 1830, speaking 
of his influence over many of his companions. Mr. Gladstone him¬ 
self witnesses to the fascination which he exercised later at Oxford 
over those who came in contact with him. 

After his ordination (1834) he was much disturbed, with others, 
by the proposal to abolish the subscription at the Universities of the 
Thirty-nine Articles. It was at this crisis that he was brought for 
a time into close relation with the leaders of the Oxford movement. 
Considering that it was the necessity for subscribing these Articles 
which had precluded him from taking his degree at Cambridge, he 
might have been supposed favorable to the intended legislation. 
But, on the contrary, he now showed at the outset that strange turn 
for paradox Tillich never left him in connection with public move¬ 
ments. The Articles had acquired to him a sudden importance as 
“a declaration of the terms on which the University proposed to 
teach its pupils, and upon which terms they must agree to learn.” 
It was “fairer to express these terms than to conceal them.” They 
had appeared to him at Cambridge prohibitory, as binding down the 
student to certain conclusions beyond which he was not to advance, 
but now they seemed “ helps to him in pursuing his studies.” This 
extraordinary refinement in argument, the tendency to see things in 
a different light from other people, and even from his own first 
plain impression, was an unhappy characteristic of Maurice all 
through his life. It led him, at a later time, to glorify the Athana- 
sian Creed as peculiarly inclusive of his own faith and deepest con¬ 
viction. There was nothing disingenuous in this; but there was an 
absence of plain sense and of that historical point of view, of the 
excess of which he complained in his friend Dean Stanley. Hailed 
by the Oxford School for the time as an ally, he soon found how 
much at variance he was with them. They were thinking in the 

12 


178 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


main of how Subscription kept all but themselves out of the Church. 
He was thinking as usual of the good that might be got out of the 
Articles as guides to higher study. They availed themselves of 
whatever help was to be got out of his early pamphlet, Subscription 
no Bondage; but he and Dr. Pusey soon came to blows; and the 
latter is said to have denounced him and his assumed zeal for Church 
privilege in no measured terms. 

Maurice’s first charge was the chaplaincy of Guy’s Hospital, which 
he held for eleven years,* during a portion of which time he was 
also Professor of English Literature at King’s College. In the latter 
year he became Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, and one of the Professors 
of Theology in King’s College. He is particularly careful to point 
out in one of his letters that he was chosen to the latter post without 
his own seeking. It deserves also to be said that before his appoint¬ 
ment he had already made knownf his peculiar interpretation of the 
phrase “Eternal life,’’which was afterwards concerned in his dis¬ 
missal from the college. Before that time he had been both War- 
burton and Boyle Lecturer; and it was as Boyle Lecturer that he 
produced the most popular of all his books already referred to, “ The 
Religions of the World. 

In 1844 he made the acquaintance of Charles Kingsley in circum¬ 
stances related in the lives of both of them. Kingsley had been 
working at Eversley as curate for about two years in the midst of 
lovely scenery, but in an utterly neglected parish. Not a grown-up 
man or woman in it could read when he began his ministry. The 
church was nearly empty; the communicants few; the water for 
Holy Baptism held in a cracked kitchen basin; and the alms collect¬ 
ed in an old wooden saucer. No wonder that the parish was over¬ 
run with dissent of an extremely ignorant type. When Kingsley 
was settled in it as rector, in the summer of 1844, he set himself 
with characteristic vigor to redeem the parish and the church. He 
was then twenty-five years of age, fourteen years younger than Mau¬ 
rice. He had passed through a wholly different order of experience. 
Brought up within the Church, and at Maurice’s earlier university, 
he had felt the spirit of the time. The scepticism that was in the 
air, as the first life of the Oxford movement died down, strongly as¬ 
sailed him. The doctrine of the Trinity especially, and what then 
seemed to him the “bigotry, cruelty, and quibbling” of the Athana- 
sian Creed—to which strangely, like Maurice, he too afterwards be¬ 
came vehemently attached — formed his special difficulty. His 
doubts, as told by himself, do not interest us greatly. They were 


* June, 1835, to 1846. 

t In a pamphlet on Mr. Ward’s case at Oxford. 




F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


179 


hard and painful, as they were truly earnest; but there is also a su¬ 
perficial air—an absence of deeper questioning—about them. His 
mind as yet evidently had not got beyond the outside of theological 
questions. He balances the alternatives between Tractarianism and 
Deism—but, in point of fact, the former never attracted him. He 
wasrepeiled by its “ascetic view of sacred ties,”an aspect in which 
it continued to be always repulsive to him. The books that chiefly 
helped him in his difficulties were, in addition to Carlyle’s writings, 
which wefe a significant factor in his intellectual development, Cole¬ 
ridge’s “Aids to Reflection” and Maurice’s “ Kingdom of Christ,”* 
just then published. He had thought of a colonial life in his tem¬ 
porary despair; but already, in 1841, he could say that he was “saved 
from the wild pride and darkling tempests of Scepticism.” His or¬ 
dination and settlement at Eversley took place in the following year. 

In the midst of his parish difficulties he naturally turned to the 
author of the “ Kingdom of Christ” for advice. Strangely, Mr. 
Maurice w'as living, in the summer of 1844, in the elder Kingsley’s 
rectory at Chelsea, where he had gone from Guy’s Hospital for 
change of air for his wife and children. In writing to Maurice he 
apologized for addressing one so much his superior; “but where,” 
he added, “shall the young priest go for advice but to the elder 
prophet? To your works I am indebted for the foundation of any 
coherent view of the word of God, the meaning of the Church of 
England, and the spiritual phenomena of the present and past ages.” 
There was no exaggeration in this statement. The more the lives 
of the two men are studied together, the more completely does it 
appear that Maurice was really, as styled by himself, Kingsley’s 
“Master” in Theology. There was much in the Eversley Rector 
with which Maurice had nothing to do—his eye for nature and col¬ 
or, his love of sport, his revels by the side of a country stream or 
by the sea-side—all those poetic elements which were undoubtedly 
the highest in Kingsley, and made him the man of genius that he 
was. °He had also an objective turn, both scientific and historical, 
which Maurice barely understood. Kingsley, in short, was a poet 
—which no imagination can conceive Maurice being, with the deep 
reflective involvements of his mind always returning upon them¬ 
selves with a tormenting ingenuity. But there was little in Kings¬ 
ley’s theology which did not come more or less directly from Mau¬ 
rice as he himself confesses. When he first began to feel the need 
of a theology, he applied to Maurice. In 1853, when the Theological 
Essays appeared, he wrote, “Maurice’s Essays will constitute an 


* He always said that he owed more to Maurice’s “ Kingdom of Christ ” 
than to any book he had ever read.—“ Life,” vol. i., j>. 84. 




180 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


epoch. If the Church of England rejects them her doom is fixed. 
She will rot and die as the Alexandrian did before her. If she ac¬ 
cept them not as a code complete, but as hints towards a new meth¬ 
od of thought, she may save herself still.” And twelve years later, 
in 1865, when both had done the best they were ever to do, in theol¬ 
ogy and other things, it is still to Maurice he looks as his theological 
master. “Your letter comforted me,”he writes, “for (strange as 
it may seem to me to say so) the only thing I really care for—the 
only thing which gives me comfort—is theology in the strict sense; 
though God knows I know little enough of it. I wish one thing, 
that you would define for me what you mean by being ‘ baptized 
into a name.’ The preposition in its transcendental sense puzzles 
me! 1 sometimes seem to grasp it, and sometimes again lose it from 
the very unrealistic turn of mind which I have. As to the Trinity 
I do understand you. You first taught me that the doctrine was a 
live thing, and not a mere formula to be swallowed by the undigest¬ 
ing reason; and from the time that I learned from you that a Father 
meant a real father, a Son a real son, and a Holy Spirit a real spirit 
who was really good and holy, I have been able to draw all sorts of 
practical lessons from it in the pulpit, and ground all my morality 
and a great deal of my natural philosophy upon it, and shall do so 
more. The procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, for 
instance, is most practically important to me. If the Spirit proceeds 
only from the Father, the whole theorem of the Trinity as well as 
its practical results fall to pieces in my mind. I don’t mean that 
good men in the Greek Church are not better than I. On the con¬ 
trary, I believe that every good man therein believes in the proces¬ 
sion from both Father and Son, whether he thinks he does so or 
not.” 

This letter is very interesting, both on its own account and as 
showing how Kingsley retained the attitude of a theological pupil 
to Maurice. And the attitude remained to the end. In the Christian 
Socialist movement which brought them into such intimate fellow¬ 
ship in 1850, Kingsley is the inspiring as well as the inspired. He 
almost takes the place of leader for a time in his young and eager 
enthusiasm. But in theology he is throughout dependent on Mau¬ 
rice, and many letters pass between them on the subject. There is 
especially an interesting series in 1855, following Maurice’s expul¬ 
sion from King’s College, Kingsley was then again under grave 
doubts concerning, among other things, Maurice’s views of Sacrifice, 
published in reply to the attacks made upon him by Dr. Candlish. 
Addressing his “ dear, dear Kingsley,” Maurice takes comfort in his 
friend’s struggles after clearer views, assured that being true to 
himself and to God, He will guide him into all truth, “Do not be 


F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


181 


in the least disturbed,”he says, “because books of mine about Sac¬ 
rifice, or anything else, do not satisfy you, or show you the way out 
of your confusions. Why should they? Is not the death of Christ, 
and your death and mine , a depth immeasurably below my sound¬ 
ings? And what have I done, if I have done anything truly and 
honestly, but beseech people not to try and measure it, but simply 
cast themselves upon the love of God which is manifested in it, and 
trust it when there is nothing else in heaven above or earth beneath 
to rest upon?” Again he says, “I am a Puritan almost incapable 
of enjoyment, though in principle justifying enjoyment as God’s 
gift to his creatures. God has given you infinite faculties of enjoy¬ 
ment. But he has given you with these the higher part of being 
manly, and of caring for your fellow-men, and their miseries and 
sins. What I fear (perhaps most unreasonably) for you is that the 
first gift may devour the second, and that your sympathy with what 
is beautiful in nature and human society should make you less able 
to stand out against these, more tolerant of that which is eating into 
the hearts of individuals and nations. Godliness I am certain is the 
true support of manliness.” 

Kingsley’s name had become associated with what was called 
“muscular Christianity.” The elder teacher evidently desires to 
caution him, as well as to emphasize his own peculiar point of view. 
The two men now, and at all times, stand before us in clear con¬ 
trast, if the light around Maurice be wavering, as it often is. The 
precise contents of his thought, even in this familiar letter, are not 
easy to give. How singular and even more than usually vague the 
manner in which he speaks of the death of Christ! But then what 
an intense spiritual glow there is in his words! Whatever may be 
his intellectual hesitations, however difficult it may be to fix him 
down to definite propositions which any one could venture to repeat, 
there is never any hesitation as to his own intense faith, his realiza¬ 
tion of the Divine love as a solid reality—a “rock,” as he says in 
the same letter, “to hold fast by, although the whole world and 
himself should be lost out of sight and go to the bottom.” All his 
subtleties and inconsistencies, as they appear to us, about the forms 
of Divine truth, never for a moment darken his spiritual vision. 
And this is Maurice throughout. The Divine Foundation is never 
doubtful to him, however strange, wavering, or paradoxical the ex¬ 
pression of his formal opinions may sometimes be. Of all men of 
our time he seems to me to have realized God most vividly. I do 
not say in his personal life—I do not venture to judge him or any 
man in this respect—but as the centre of all knowledge and all life, 
as the core of all human good, personal, domestic, social, national, 
ecclesiastical. Everything was from God with him, and all its 


182 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


strength came straight out of God. Religion above all he never 
allowed to shut out God from him as many do, as he constantly 
complained all religious parties did. The Bible had all its meaning 
to him as a direct revelation from God. It was God he everywhere 
saw moving through its pages and instructing him—a living God, 
with whom he could converse, and to w r hom he could go as having 
the words of eternal life. It was this that made him so jealous of 
certain modes of historical criticism, which it must be confessed he 
did not fully appreciate. It was this that made him prefer the word 
“theology” to religion, which always seemed to him to have some¬ 
thing of a Pagan meaning. It was this also that made him so often 
say that all his knowledge and thought began in theology. It was 
said of Spinoza by Novalis that he was a “God-intoxicated man,” but 
of all modern men Maurice seems to me to have most deserved this 
name. He lived as few men have ever lived in the Divine. He was, 
as Mr. Gladstone has said of him, applying words from Dante, “a 
spiritual splendor.” The Divine embraced him. He did not need 
to strive after it like most men. It was the Alpha and Omega of all 
his being—the only reality in comparison with which all other things 
were shadowy. It was this more than anything that made him the 
spiritual power that he was. In the presence of Maurice it was 
hardly possible to doubt of a Divine sphere — of a spiritual life. 
While the commercial world by its selfishness was denying God, 
and the religious world by its slanders degrading Him, and the 
scientific world by its theories hiding Him from view, or proclaim¬ 
ing Him unknown, there was a reality in Maurice’s faith that left 
no room for doubt. I know of no life, with all the intellectual 
puzzles which it presents, so intensely and powerfully Divine. 

Kingsley was far less intense and theological. He had a broader 
nature, which took in more of the variety and beauty of life. He 
had, as Maurice acknowledged, a far higher capacity of natural en¬ 
joyment. But he, too, in everything—in his novel-writing, in his 
social efforts, in his history and science, as well as in his sermons— 
was a witness to the Divine. He did not glow, as Maurice did, with 
a Divine radiance in all he did; he had neither his “Master’s” subt¬ 
lety nor his profundity; but he was more intelligible, healthy, and 
broad-minded, and he carried the spirit of Christianity as heartily, 
if not as profoundly, into all his work. Maurice was more of the 
Prophet both in his tenderness and occasional fierceness—Kingsley 
more of the Poet. Yet with all his more concrete poetic sympathies, 
the pupil was earnest as the theological master he delighted to hon¬ 
or. One who knew him well has said of him, “The two most dis¬ 
tinctive features of his religious teaching were that the world is 
God’s w T orld and not the Devil’s, and that manliness is entirely com- 


F. D. MAURICE AND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 


183 


patible with godliness.” The former was the manner in which he 
applied the great principle of his teacher that humanity and the 
world are originally constituted in Christ and belong to God, what¬ 
ever footing the Devil may have got in them; the second was, in a 
sense, his own peculiar gospel, springing out of his own high cour¬ 
age and love of natural life. There was a true message in both 
truths for his generation. They taught that Nature and life were 
from God at a time when science on the one hand and asceticism 
on the other tended to sever them from His presence. If Maurice 
discerned more deeply the Divine constitution of things, Kingsley, 
by his poetic and living sympathies, made the Divine more visible 
everywhere around us. 


184 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


yin. 

“Broad Church”— Continued. 

FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 

There is no life that mirrors more completely the spiritual con¬ 
flicts of the fifth decade of our century than that of Frederick W. 
Robertson. And yet at first his opinions seemed set in a fixed 
groove. Trained in an evangelical family, he remained more or less 
an Evangelical till he was 27 years of age. He passed through Ox¬ 
ford at the time when the Anglo-Catholic movement was rising to 
its height. He was fascinated by it, but remained firm to the prin¬ 
ciples of his youth. He carried the same principles into the exer¬ 
cise of his early ministry, and it was not till after he had been a 
clergyman for some years that he was caught and carried away by 
the spirit of his time. He was of Scottish parentage, and partly 
educated at the Edinburgh Academy.* His father was a soldier, 
and he himself looked forward, as a boy, to the same profession. 
His heart, in fact, was passionately set on a soldier’s career, and it 
was only with great reluctance that he abandoned the prospect. At 
first he especially recoiled from entering the Church—yet this seemed 
not only to his father, but to all who knew him best, the profession 
for which he was most fitted ; and at last his own heart, under a 
sense of duty, however, rather than enthusiasm, inclined in the same 
direction. The singular purity and devoutness of his character, his 
deep religious convictions, which made him say, even while ardently 
cherishing the idea of entering the army, that his object was not ‘ ‘ to 
win laurels, but to do goodhis spirit of self-sacrifice and earnest¬ 
ness in all he did, led his friends, no doubt, to the conclusion which 
they impressed upon him and which he ultimately accepted. He 
was from a boy a prayerful student of the Bible, and sought to regu¬ 
late by it his own life and the lives of others. When travelling with 
a companion in his twenty-first year, the same year that he entered 
the University (1837), he collected the servants of the several inns at 


* Frederick W. Robertson, Suffolk, appears as second in the prize list 
of the Edinburgh Academy, 1832, his friend George R. Moncrieff stand¬ 
ing first. There are two sets of verses—one in Latin, the other in Eng¬ 
lish-attached to his name, but neither of remarkable merit. 



P. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


185 


which they stayed to prayer in the evening. At Oxford he estab¬ 
lished a society for prayer and conversation on the Scriptures. His 
direct study of the Scriptures and the confidence with which he 
read in them certain great principles, were evidently the main means 
by which he resisted the influence of Newmanism. He was carried, 
as he himself afterwards said, to the brink of the precipice,* but 
was held back by the force of his early training and a certain Paul¬ 
ine simplicity and severity of biblical thought characteristic of his 
youth. 

Robertson’s first ministry was at Winchester, where he accepted a 
curacy in July, 1840. He carried with him into his work, as his 
biographer says, “ a grave and awful sense of responsibility.” His 
religious character, always earnest, had deepened at Oxford. The 
death of one of his sisters, and her happiness and peace in dying, had 
affected him greatly. Amid all the temptations of his young life 
at Paris (where he was for some time), as well as at Oxford, he had 
led a consistent Christian life and grown in Christian experience. 
Especially there were already developed in him two features of 
character which were afterwards very conspicuous— “ hatred and 
resistance of evil, and a reverence and effort for purity.” There 
was something striking in the strength of his feelings in both these 
respects during all his life. He was never so moved as when he had 
“ to quell a falsehood or avenge a wrong.” Any injury to woman 
was especially resented by him. He had, as his biographer remarks, 
a singular chasteness of spirit which gave him, in a large degree, his 
insight into moral truth, and the fineness with which he could dis¬ 
criminate its more delicate shades. Vigorous in health when young, 
and with many soldierly qualities and great love of adventure, he was 
yet constitutionally of a sad temperament, the result of a singularly 
susceptible nervous organization which vibrated acutely in response 
to every influence of nature and life. A more highly-strung mind 
can hardly be imagined, reaching from intense enjoyment to pain¬ 
ful depression. He seemed always haunted by an unfulfilled ideal, 
and yet his natural fulness of feeling went forth in a power of real¬ 
izing all the higher pleasures of life in a remarkable degree. “ The 
woof ” of his own life “ was dark ”— as he said of life in general- 
hut it was “shot with a warp of gold.” 

During all the time of his ministry at Winchester he labored more 
or less under a feeling of oppressive responsibility. He lived rigor¬ 
ously, frequently refraining from adequate food and sleep, compel¬ 
ling' himself to rise early, and systematizing his whole life under a 
sense of religious devotion. He gave certain days to prayer on defi- 


* “ Life,” vol. i., p. 120. 






186 


Movements of religious thought, 


nite subjects, and read daily books of devotion with scrupulous ad-> 
herence to a plan. He read particularly such books as the lives 
of Martyn and Brainerd, and the “Imitation of Christ.” He con¬ 
tinued his Greek and Hebrew studies; he visited the poor diligently; 
he grudged no self-denial to do the work to which he had been 
called. “Only one thing was worth living for,” he said to a friend, 
“ to do God’s work, and gradually grow in conformity to his image 
b} r mortification and self-denial and prayer. When that is accom¬ 
plished, the sooner we leave this scene of weary struggle the better. 
Till then, welcome battle, conflict, victory.”* Men seldom think, 
and still seldomer write, in this way after the first years of youth; 
the words breathe the intense zeal of his youthful ministry. 

From the first Robertson showed special if not marked gifts as 
a preacher. He spoke so that men listened to him. His voice was 
always musical and impressive; his heart was in what he said; and 
while he preached the ordinary Evangelical doctrines he was free 
from the peculiar phraseology of the school. There was, however, 
little or no play of thought in his Winchester sermons. They ran 
on the usual lines, were full of “ doctrinal analysis and general de¬ 
scription of the love of Christ,” and in no way indicated his future 
power. Even his letters of this time are said to be “ scarcely worth 
reading.” All that he was yet to be remained dormant. The rou¬ 
tine of his work absorbed him, and his rigorous abstinence and Puri¬ 
tan severity in dealing with himself laid the seeds of after disease. 
“It is painful,” says his biographer, “ to read his diary, in which all 
his inward life is mapped out in divisions, his sins and errors labelled, 
selfishness discovered in all his efforts and resolves, and lists made 
out of the graces and gifts which he needed especially.”! 

The result of all this was that after about a year he fell ill. He 
thought himself attacked by the family malady, consumption, which 
carried off his two sisters. He did not care to live long, and the 
sense of the shortness of his time only made him redouble his ef¬ 
forts. But his rector,! and others more considerate of his health 
than himself, at length forced him to take a continental holiday. 
He made a visit to the Rhine and Switzerland, which is chiefly 
memorable as serving to bring out his keen antagonism at once to 
Roman Catholicism and German Neology. He was bold in con¬ 
verse with men on spiritual subjects. He never shrank from mak¬ 
ing known his sentiments, and in his intense opposition to Popery 
sometimes indulged in a pugnacity of debate which was not witli- 


* “Life,” vol. i., p. 61. f ibid., vol. i., p. 67. 

X Mr. Nicholson, Rector of the united parishes of St. Maurice, St. Mary 
Kalendar, and St. Peter’s, Colebrook. 




F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


187 


out its risks. As unlike as possible to bis later attitude, he was at 
this time a polemic on behalf of ordinary British Protestantism in 
season and out of season. At Geneva he plunged eagerly into the 
religious questions which then agitated the city. He had many 
conversations with Cesar Malan and others less orthodox, and main¬ 
tained always wdth zeal his own views. “I have just returned 
from another long discussion with Malan before several persons, 
which I do not like, because calmness in argument is then always 
difficult. You think of your own victory instead of the truth. 
However, I only fenced, and allowed him to cross - question me. 
He does it in the most affectionate and earnest manner; but I could 
not yield, because I believe all I said leaned upon God’s truth.” 
He said—and there was much pathetic foresight in the prophecy, 
little as young Robertson, in the midst of all his enthusiasm, felt 
it at the time—“ Mon tres-cher frere, vous avez une triste vie et un 
triste ministere. ” 

Geneva proved the farthest point of his travels at this time. He 
there met a young lady, daughter of a Northamptonshire Baronet, 
and after a brief acquaintance married her. It has always been 
supposed that the deep sadness of his life had something to do with 
this sudden event; but the veil has not been lifted for us, and we 
have no right to try to lift it. He returned almost immediately 
after his marriage, and settled at Cheltenham ; and here, after a 
brief interval, he began the second stage of his ministry in circum¬ 
stances that seemed to promise happiness and usefulness. He was 
greatly attached to his rector, the Rev. Archibald Boyd, afterwards 
rector at St. James’s, Paddington, and latterly Dean of Exeter. He 
looked up to him for a time with the greatest respect, and was 
even disposed to learn from him as a preacher. His own preaching 
at Cheltenham from the first evidently struck a higher key than 
that of his Winchester ministry. There are many testimonies to 
this effect. One friend writes, “I had a prejudice against him, 
through no fault of his, but I was not merely struck but startled by 
his sermon. The high order of thought, the large and clear con¬ 
ception, the breadth of view, the passion held in leash, the tremu¬ 
lously earnest tone, the utter forgetfulness of self in his subject, and 
the abundance of the heart out of which the mouth speaks, made 
me feel in fact that here indeed was one whom it would be well 
to miss no opportunity of hearing. From the first he largely swayed 
those minds that had any point of contact with him.” It seemed 
as if he had found a fitting sphere for his powers. But gradually 
he fell into his old depression. There were evidently external as 
well as internal causes for this, which are not fully explained; the 
relations with his rector, at first so cordial, seem to have altered. 


188 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


He took it into his head that his sermons were not intelligible to 
the congregation. The admirers of the rector’s preaching were 
plainly no admirers of his — the two men were quite different in 
their cast of thought, and the ladies who fluttered around the In 
cumbent did not care for the Curate. The idea that he was more 
or less of a failure assailed him. “ Sad and dispirited,” is an entry 
in his diary in 1845, after he had been about three years in Cheltenham. 

During all this time his intellectual powers were rapidly growing. 
Carlyle’s books became favorite studies. German literature and 
theology opened up their treasures to him. “He began to hew out 
his own path to his convictions.” How far this new spirit, which 
made itself felt no doubt in his sermons, may have had to do with 
his discomfort in the discharge of his duty, is not said; but there 
can be little doubt that the change that was gradually passing over 
his thought was the main factor in the mental disturbance that 
now overtook him. Since 1843 his attitude towards the Evangeli¬ 
cal party had begun to alter. Of this date he says, “ As to the state 
of the Evangelical clergy, I think it lamentable. I see sentiment 
instead of principle, a miserable mawkish religion superseding a 
state which once was healthy. Their adherents I love less than 
themselves, for they are but copies of their faults in a large edition. 
I stand nearly alone, a Theological Ishmael. The Tractarians de¬ 
spise me, and the Evangelicals somewhat loudly express their doubts 
of me. ” 

This is the earliest indication of Robertson’s decided dissatisfac¬ 
tion with his old views. The change had begun within a year of 
the commencement of his ministry at Cheltenham. The three 
years which followed were destined to see a complete revolution 
in his thought. Doubts came to him in quick succession. The 
study of German, the enlarged study of Scripture, a deeper acquaint¬ 
ance with his own heart, dissatisfaction apparently with the rector’s 
teaching and modes of action, which had at first so much attracted 
him, seem all to have contributed to the result. His sermons al 
tered, and it became painful for him to preach. The reaction was 
violent in his case, in proportion to the unhesitating acceptance 
w T hich he had given to the Evangelical doctrines. The whole sys 
tern on which he had founded his faith and his work fell away 
under him irretrievably, and after a struggle to maintain the old 
with the new, he gave way entirely, and plunged into a state of 
spiritual agony, so awful, that it not only shook his health to its 
centre, but smote his spirit down into so profound a darkness, that 
of all his early faiths but one remained, “ It must be right to do right.” 

In such a state it was impossible for him to continue preaching. 
The state of his health alone forbade this; and there was nothing 


F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


189 


for him but once more to leave the scene of his ministry, and seek 
for some assuagement of his trouble in continental travel. There is 
no picture of the spiritual struggles of this time, when Froude, and 
Clough, and Sterling were all in the death-throes of their early faith, 
to be compared in touching interest with that of Frederick Robert¬ 
son. He has himself told the story of it, and the tremulous depths 
of his language bring us very near his heart. He went down into 
the darkness, and all light for a time seemed to leave him—all save 
the sense of right and good. “If there be no God and no future 
state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to 
be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be 
brave than to be a coward.” So he felt, and from this moral basis 
he fought his way again upward towards the light. 

Robertson’s character stands singularly free in this great crisis 
from all trace of lower feeling or self-involution—from all that van¬ 
ity, pride, or presumption which so frequently accompany such 
states even in large minds. There is no trace in him of mere intel- 
leetualism, still less of sentimentalism, as if it were something fine 
to be the victim of Divine despair; nor is there, as we may see in 
George Eliot, any sense of superiority over the logic of superstition 
—only a profound and unutterable misery, as of one from whom a 
Divine treasure had been stolen, and to whom there had come “ a 
fearful loneliness of spirit,” from which the stars of hope had gone 
out one by one. He was driven into the wilderness by sheer force 
of spiritual perplexity; he passed out of sight of men and books, 
that he might fight with his doubts in calm resolution. “ He did 
not seek for sympathy. He was accustomed, as he said, to consume 
his own smoke.” I know nothing more touching in biography than 
his lonely wanderings in the Tyrol amidst scenery the excitement of 
which seemed only for a time to deepen his mental unrest. It is a 
strange and painful yet exalting experience when the weary heart 
carries with it the pressure of an intolerable self-consciousness into 
such scenes of solemn beauty, and feels the glory around only to 
deepen the awe of life and the burden of thought. The clouds, in¬ 
stead of being driven away, seem for a time only to gather shape 
and consistency; but all the while Nature is doing its healing work, 
and the brain once more rallying its exhausted forces, till, with the 
return of health, it is found that the scenes through which we have 
passed have wrought like magic, bringing not only peace, but ex¬ 
pansion and maturity of intellect.* 


* As he himself says in one of his letters, vol. i., p. 274—“The soul 
collects its mightiest forces by being thrown in upon itself, and coerced 
solitude often matures the mental and moral character marvellously.” 




190 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


The autumn that Robertson spent in the Tyrol and at Heidelberg 
in 1846 was the turning-point of his life. His Evangelical faith was 
gone before he left England—worn out of his heart and mind by 
many causes. The great principles of morality, or JJrsachen, as he 
called them, were alone left to him; all else was gone. “Who was 
Christ? What are miracles? What do you mean by inspiration? 
Is the resurrection a fact or a myth? What saves a man—his own 
character, or that of another? Is the next life individual conscious¬ 
ness or continuation of the consciousness of the universe?” These 
and many other questions—to which he says “Krause would re¬ 
turn one answer, Neander another, and Hr. Chalmers another”— 
tormented him. They had come upon him not suddenly. He 
writes to a friend, the same apparently who had introduced him to 
Germanism, that he must not distress himself, as if he were responsi¬ 
ble for his doubts. But if the sense of religious difficulties had 
been gradually growing in his mind before, it was his experience 
and ministry at Cheltenham that ripened them. He may have 
knowp something of them before; but there is nothing less like real 
spiritual perplexity than the sort of way in which young minds 
sometimes play with difficulties. And it was only when driven 
from Cheltenham in the autumn of 1846 that the rain descended 
and the floods came, and the wind beat upon his house till it shook 
to its foundations. It was only then certainly, and after much 
spiritual struggle, that he began to build again from the founda¬ 
tion. His whole spiritual and intellectual nature underwent a 
change. He laid hold of religious questions in a way he had never 
done before. His vision was enlarged, his grasp became stronger, 
richer, more penetrating. All the sermons and writings by which 
he is known are after this date. He had realized his own wish. As 
a friend and he looked at the summit of Skiddaw enveloped in a 
mist, on the eve of his departure to the Continent, he said to him, 
“I would not have my head, like the peak of that mountain, in¬ 
volved in cloud for all that you could offer me.” “ I would,” re¬ 
joined Robertson quickly, “for by-and-by the cloud and mist will 
roll away, and the sun will come down upon it in all his glory.” 
So it proved with him. The cloud rolled away: he emerged into a 
radiance, which did not always abide with him in its fulness, but 
which never again left him. Up to this point he was only a prom¬ 
ising preacher. Henceforth he became, beyond all question, one of 
the spiritual thinkers of his time—strong in every fibre of intellectual 
and religious life. In the silence and solitude of the mountains of 
the Tyrol his “ soul, left to explore its own recesses, and to feel its 
nothingness in the presence of the Infinite,” had laid its founda¬ 
tions deep and sure. 


F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


191 


He was two months at Oxford before settling at Brighton; and 
here he enjoyed for the first time the full freedom of preaching. 
He began rapidly to draw attention. The undergraduates were 
thronging the church, and beginning to hang upon his words, when 
the sudden change to Brighton came. He began his ministry there 
in the autumn of 1847. He was still only thirty-one; but his mind 
now opened at once to its full powers. His genius was never brighter 
or more “productive” than during his first two years at Brighton. 
His inborn gifts of eloquence—of luminous intelligence—his capaci¬ 
ty of swaying the human heart and of bringing light to the most 
difficult subjects, all came forth in their full development. He 
seemed as if he knew that his time would be short; and, “unhasting, 
yet unresting,” he gave himself to make full proof of his ministry. 

It was as a preacher that Frederick Robertson became one of the 
spiritual forces of his time. He was also active as a philanthropist 
—as a friend of working-men, who gathered around him in numbers 
and with eager admiration. He delivered lectures on Poetry, and 
he published an analysis of Tennyson’s “ In Memoriam ” of rare 
value. His literary powers were of the highest order, especially his 
faculty for poetic criticism. His theological learning was ample, 
and thoroughly his own, and at one time he projected a work on 
“ Inspiration. ” But it was in the pulpit that he put forth all his in¬ 
tellectual and spiritual strength, and his “Sermons ’’remain the per¬ 
manent memorial of his genius and of the strong impulses of new 
and living thought that came from him. It is as a preacher, there¬ 
fore, that we are alone called upon to estimate him. 

What, then, were the elements of his rare and almost unexampled 
influence, not merely while he lived, but since his death? For of 
him, of all preachers, may it be truly said, that “ being dead, he yet 
speaketh.” His sermons, 'which, with a single exception, have all 
been published since his death, and many of them in an imperfect 
form, have not only perpetuated his fame, but spread the influence 
of his thought far and wide beyond any bounds to which his living 
voice could have extended. We have already spoken of his impres¬ 
sive voice and manner. His voice is described as “ low-pitched, 
deep and penetrating, seldom rising; but when it did, going forth in 
a deep volume of sound like a great bell,” thrilling from the repres¬ 
sion rather than excitement of feeling. Like many other men with 
no ear for music, he was yet a subtle master of sound, just as he was 
peculiarly susceptible to its witchery in others. There were states 
in which it would move him indescribably, and so “linger upon his 
ear that he could not sleep at night.” This was only a part of his 
singular sensibility to all sense-impressions—all influences of form 
and color as well as sound. Brightness, beauty of any kind, affected 


192 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


him directly, and it made all the difference in the world to him 
whether he had to compose in a room facing to the north or the 
south. It was this same sensitiveness that gave him such an ex¬ 
quisite perception of natural scenery, so that its glow or terror, its 
wildness or sweetness, touched him to the very quick. There is 
nothing in his sermons and lectures more exquisite than some of his 
reminiscences of his wanderings in the Tyrol. They are like bits 
of sudden glory thrown upon a canvas, never for their own sake 
merely, but as illustrating some hidden chords of feeling or some 
fresh development of truth. None but the eye of an artist could 
have seized the picture, and no one but with rare gifts as a thinker 
could have fitted the picture to the argument. 

Apart from voice, Robertson’s external characteristics as a preacher 
were not specially effective. He was entirely without oratorical 
■ parade. He had hardly any gesture save a slow motion of his hand 
upwards, and when worn and ill in his last years, a fatal disease con¬ 
suming both brain and heart, he stood almost motionless in the pul¬ 
pit, ‘ ‘ his pale thin face and tall emaciated form seeming, as he 
spoke, to be glowing as alabaster glows when lit up by an inward 
fire.” When he began his sermon, he held in his hand a small slip 
of paper with a few notes upon it. He referred to it now and then; 
but before ten minutes had gone by, it was crushed to uselessness in 
his grasp, for he knit his fingers together over it, as he knit his words 
over his thought.” 

It was in all the nobler qualities of thought, insight, and feeling 
that he excelled; as it is these qualities that still live in his sermons 
and have made them such a marvellous power. He was character¬ 
istically a Thinker in the Pulpit. He went straight to the heart of 
every subject that he touched, and with a rare combination of im¬ 
aginative and dialectic power brought out all its meaning. He felt 
a truth before he expressed it; but when once he felt it, and by 
patient study had made it its own, he wrought it with the most 
admirable logic—a logic closely linked, yet living in every link—into 
the minds of his hearers. This live glowing concatenated sequence 
of thought is seen in all his greater sermons. It could only have 
been forged in a brain stirred to its depths—on fire with the ideas 
which possessed him for the time—yet never mastered by, always 
mastering, his subject. This impress of creative force as he pro¬ 
ceeded in his sermons gives them their wonderful perfection of 
form amidst all their hurrying energy. They are many of them 
great as literary compositions, with a living movement rare even in 
the higher literature. The truth is, they were literally the creation 
of moments of inspired utterance. We cannot imagine them writ¬ 
ten in cold blood. Their organization shows a heated yet controlled 


F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 193 

enthusiasm. ‘He disentangled his subject as he advanced from 
the crowd of images and thoughts which clustered round it. He 
exercised a severe choice over this crowd, and rejected what was 
superabundant. There was no confusion in his mind. Step by 
step he led his hearers from point to point till at last he placed 
them on the summit where they could see all the landscape of his 
subject in luminous and connected order. He hated an isolated 
thought. He was not happy till he had ranged it under a princi¬ 
ple. Once there it was found to be linked to a thousand others. 
Hence arose his affluence of ideas, his ability for seizing remote 
analogies, his wide grasp and lucid arrangement of his subject, his 
power of making it, if abstruse, clear, if common, great; if great, 
not too great for human nature’s daily food. For he was not only 
a thinker, but the thinker for men. All thought he directed to 
human ends. Far above his keenness of sympathy for the true and 
beautiful was his sympathy for the true and beautiful in union with 
living hearts. ”* 

If the highest work of thought is to illuminate a subject — to 
pierce to its heart, and unfold in creative order all its parts, and not 
merely to tell you about it and what others have thought of it—to 
make alive a new order of ideas and not merely explain an old 
order—then Frederick Robertson is certainly the greatest thinker 
who has appeared in the pulpit in modern times. Other preachers 
may have been more eloquent in the ordinary sense, more capable 
of swaying with delight varied audiences, but there are no sermons 
comparable to his in sustained elevation of thought. There are 
none that carry readers so steadily on the wings of spiritual and 
imaginative reason till they enter into the very life of the subject, 
and see eye to eye with the preacher. How vividly, for example, 
do we realize the contrasted attitude of Jew and Gentile to the 
Cross of Christ in his famous sermons “The Jews require a sign, 
and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified!” 
How does “The Star in the East” assume meaning as he expounds 
it! With what a freshness does he discourse of “ Christ’s Estimate 
of Sin,” and his creative vision of the Divine capacities that still 
lived in humanity amidst all its sinful ruin! How does the loneli¬ 
ness of Christ shadow us, and the sacrifice of Christ fill our hearts 
as he speaks of them! His thought was not only thorough. It 
not only went into a subject and round it, and embraced it in all 
its essential bearings, but it pictured it. It made it alive. It pierced 
it through and through at once with light and life. 

But this Divine rationality—rare as it is—would not have made 


* “Life,” vol. i., pp. 193-4. 

13 




194 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


Robertson’s sermons all the power they have been apart from other 
and still higher qualities. With all his intellectuality he is never 
far from the depths of the spiritual life. And he touches these 
depths — the secrets of the heart, the sorrows of sin, aspirations 
after holiness, not only with an exquisite tenderness, sympathy, and 
penetrating knowledge, but above all with a simplicity, directness, 
and honesty that leave almost all preachers behind. We know of 
no sermons that search the heart, we do not say more delicately, 
but with a straighter, clearer delicacy than Robertson’s. Newman 
can play upon richer and more tangled chords of spiritual feeling, 
he can awaken and startle the conscience with more solemnity, but 
there are intricacies and not unfrequently sophistries in Newman’s 
most moving appeals. It is the image of the Church or the author¬ 
ity of dogma that plays with him the part of spiritual judge. You 
require to be a Churchman to feel the full force of what he says. 
He often deals obliquely with the conscience, and delights to take 
it at a disadvantage. In Robertson the play of spiritual feeling is 
direct as it is intense. There is not a trace of sophistry in the most 
subtle of his spiritual analyses or the most powerful of his spiritual 
appeals. Our common spiritual nature, and the great chords of 
feeling that lie in it, and not mere churchly feeling or over-drilled 
conscience, are the subjects with which he deals. Above all it is 
Christ himself, the living Christ, and not any mere image of his 
authority or notion about him with which he plies the heart. “My 
whole heart’s expression,” he says in one of his letters,* “is ‘none 
but Christ,’not in so-called evangelical sense, but in a deeper real 
sense—the mind of Christ; to feel as he felt; to judge the world, 
and to estimate the world’s maxims as he judged and estimated. 
To realize that is to feel none but Christ! But then in proportion 
as a man does that, he is stripping himself of garment after gar¬ 
ment till his soul becomes naked of that which once seemed part of 
himself; he is not only giving up prejudice after prejudice, but 
also renouncing sympathy after sympathy with friends whose smile 
and approbation were once his life.” 

There is in this last sentence a touch of exaggeration. He was apt 
to generalize too painfully from his own experience. But there was 
no exaggeration in the intensity with which he sought for himself 
nearness to Christ. The peculiar directness of his love to Christ 
was the root of all his life and effort. “ It was a conscious personal 
realized devotion,” too sacred to speak much about. It filled his 
whole soul and left him alone with the overpowering consciousness 
of the Divine Presence. It was this feeling that dictated his famous 


* “Life,” vol. i., p. 154, 





F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


195 


words when he spoke in the Town Hall of Brighton to the working¬ 
men about infidel publications. “I refuse to permit discussion re¬ 
specting the love which a Christian man bears to his Redeemer— 
a love more delicate far than the love which was ever borne to sister 
or the adoration with w T hich he regards his God—a reverence more 
sacred than ever man bore to mother.” This supreme feeling towards 
Christ pervades all Robertson’s sermons. Every subject is brought 
more or less into direct relation with Christ, and glows or darkens 
in the light of his presence. It was his hold of the * ‘ mind of Christ ” 
and the flashes of insight that constantly came from this source that 
made him so helpful as well as powerful a preacher. Above all he 
dealt with these two great realities—“Christ and the soul.” 

Closely allied with this was his love of the truth in all things. To 
do and say the right thing because it is right—" to dare to gaze on 
the splendor of the naked truth without putting a veil before it to 
terrify any by mystery and vagueness—to live by love and not by 
fear—that is the life of a true brave man who will take Christ and 
his mind for the truth, instead of the clamor either of-the worldly 
world or the religious world.” He had no pet commonplaces to en¬ 
force either of tradition or doctrine. His aim was to see every ques¬ 
tion in the pure light of the gospel—to show how Christ had grasped 
the problems of thought and of society at their root, and given forth 
fertile principles applying to all time. He liked to be regarded as a 
teacher rather than a preacher. He hated using fine words about 
religion, or being supposed a fine talker. In the reaction which fre¬ 
quently came to him after preaching he was disposed to undervalue 
it altogether, and even to speak of it with contempt. He seemed to 
himself at times to do so little good, and the buzz that besets popu¬ 
larity in the pulpit rang painfully in his ears. It was impossible to 
offend him more than to speak of him as a popular preacher. He 
hated the idea. There was to him a sort of degradation in it; and 
much of the indignant scorn and pride which rushed out sometimes 
in his words took their keenness from this source. There was a 
certain morbid feeling in this as in other points, but it all came of 
the deep truthfulness of the man, in whom the oratorical instinct, 
powerful as it was, never overpowered for a moment the higher 
qualities of sense, judgment, taste, and reason. 

His theological standpoint is in some respects difficult to define. 
His biographer says “he was the child of no theological father. 
He owned no master but Christ; and he did not care, provided he 
fought under him the good fight, to what regiment he belonged.” 
The term "Broad Church,” used as a distinctive party name, is 
used of him, as throughout, with reserve. He was certainly neither 
Tractarian nor Evangelical; and in this sense he was "broad”— 




196 MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

that he interpreted Christianity and the Church in the widest sense 
both historically and spiritually. All men who own their spiritual 
heritage in baptism were to him the children of a common God and 
Father. They were neither “made the children of God” by bap¬ 
tism, nor was there any doubt as to their position. He approved of 
the Gorham decision not because he agreed with Mr. Gorham, but 
because it left the question open. If he differed from Mr. Gorham 
he certainly differed also from the Bishop of Exeter. Baptism, he 
said, is the special revelation of the great truth that all who are born 
into the world are children of God by right. The truth dr fact is 
not dependent on the sacrament, nor on the faith of the recipient. 
It is a fact before we believe it, else how could we be asked to be¬ 
lieve it? But it must be acknowledged and acted upon. We must 
believe it and live it. When the Catechism says, “My baptism, 
wherein I was made a child of God,” the meaning is the same as in 
the saying, “the Queen is made Queen at her coronation.” She 
was Queen before; nay, if she had not been Queen, coronation could 
not make her Queen.* Against this view he set the Tractarian as 
implying the magical creation of a nature at the moment of baptism; 
and the Evangelical as doing the same, but only in select cases. 
Either view appeared to him to destroy the essential nature of Chris¬ 
tianity. His position was virtually the same as Mr. Maurice’s, but 
he seized it with a healthier breadth. Maurice equally repudiated 
any magical efficacy in the rite, but he fell back into a species of 
ritualistic magic in attaching a special efficacy to the sacrament as 
administered in the Church of England. Robertson neither implies 
nor asserts any such restriction. 

His explanation of baptism was closely connected with his whole 
view of dogma. He did not reject dogma even when its form re¬ 
pelled him. He tried to find its inner and comprehensive meaning. 
There was to him a certain verity underlying all dogma. The whole 
verity no dogma could express or measure. It only tried to do so. 
It was a proximate, tentative, or partial, but never complete or final 
interpretation of Divine Truth. So he always asked of a dogma, 
What does it really mean? Not what did it mean in the language 
of those who spoke it. “How in my language can I put into form 
the underlying truth—in corrected form if possible—but in only 
approximate form after all . . . God’s truth must be boundless. 
Tractarians and Evangelicals suppose that it is a pond which you 
can walk round and say, ‘I hold the truth.’ What, all! Yes, all; 
there it is circumscribed, defined, proved, quite large enough to be 
the immeasurable Gospel of the Lord of the Universe !”f There is 


* See Sermons on Baptism, second Series, and Letters, vol. ii. et seq. 
+ Yol. ii., p. 41. 




F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


197 


wisdom as well as breadth in such words—a higher wisdom than 
many identified with the “Broad Church” knew. Neither Maurice 
nor Kingsley ever reached the true rational standpoint as to creeds 
and formulas. They failed to understand the profound distrust 
that a certain order of spiritual minds have of all statements, like 
the Atlianasian Creed, which profess to sum up Divine Truth. Use- 
ful as “aids to faith,” they are intolerable as limitations of faith. 
They are really water-marks of the Christian consciousness of the 
past. To make them “ponds” enclosing that consciousness for all 
ages, is to mistake both their real origin and the nature of Divine 
truth. For this truth, as Robertson steadily maintained, is of the 
nature of poetry, “ to be felt and not proved. ”* It is to be realized 
not as propositions addressed to the intellect, but as the witness of 
God’s Spirit to man’s spirit. And so all Robertson’s teaching was 
suggestive rather than dogmatic. He sought to bring men face to 
face with the truth, not in sharp doctrinal outlines, but in the ful¬ 
ness of its spirit and life, which—allowing in his view differences 
of opinion—united men by a pervasive spirit of love to Christ and 
to one another. He had none of that dread of “different sorts of 
opinion ” that Mr. Maurice had—which he and Newman alike stig¬ 
matized as “Liberalism.” He did not shrink from the word “Lib¬ 
eral ” in religion. It expressed the generous recognition of differ¬ 
ence and expansion of opinion here as in other things. He knew 
very well, that, whatever w r ords w r e may use, it is simply a fact— 
which no theory whatever can alter—that men will differ in relig¬ 
ious opinion, and that the higher view, therefore, is to admit the 
validity of dogmatic differences, and to point to the true Centre, the 
Spirit of Christ, in which all differences, if they do not disappear, 
assume their true proportion. This aspect of Robertson’s teaching, 
we agree with his biographer in thinking, will prove the most last¬ 
ing of all. It has radiated upon all schools of Christian thought a 
softening influence. It has indicated the true point of contact for 
diverse lines of Christian teaching. Boldly and confidently as he 
dealt with many Christian dogmas, the atonement, the doctrine of 
sin, the doctrine of the sacraments, of absolution, of imputed right¬ 
eousness, of apostolical succession, and rich as is the light of thought 
which he has thrown around many of them, he never supposed that 
he had exhausted their meaning, or said the last word regarding 
them. Such solutions as he gave he knew to be partial like all 
other solutions. “ The time might come when the}'' would cease to 
be adequate. The solution that was fitting for one age might be 
unfitting for another.” He kept his mind open to still higher and 


* Vol. ii., p. 165. 





198 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


more comprehensive explanations. He looked forward “to an ad¬ 
vance of the Christian Church—not into new truths, but into wider 
and more tolerant views of those old truths which in themselves are 
incapable of change.” 

Robertson’s genius was thus not only rich, but eminently expan¬ 
sive. It was generous and Catholic to the core. He might speak at 
times bitterly against Evangelicalism. If there was unfairness in 
his mind at all, it was in some of his criticisms of Evangelical doc¬ 
trine. But this was a natural reaction against what he considered 
its injurious commonplaces, and the suffering they had inflicted 
upon him. He was upon the whole highly just in speech as he was 
fearless in thought.* He exhibited the combination so rare at all 
times of intense spirituality with a large critical and historical fac¬ 
ulty. He had a true appreciation—far more so than other teachers 
with whom he has been classed—of the natural conditions underly¬ 
ing the development of Divine revelation and of dogmatic thought. 
He was no man of a school, with esoteric thoughts and private modes 
of interpretation destined to be swept away by the progress of criti¬ 
cism. He was Christian in the widest sense, with his mind alive to 
all the influences of knowledge, nature, or life. He stood in the 
van of critical as well as spiritual progress, content to vindicate re¬ 
ligion in the light of history and of conscience. He had no wish to 
disturb old dogmas in order to substitute dogmas of his own. He 
rather tried to make the best use of them he could—knowing how 
impossible is exactitude in matters of religious opinion. His aim 
was not to displace violently any central points of faith, but to 
make the old live as far as possible with the new. He sought to 
broaden down “from precedent to precedent,” recognizing the uni¬ 
versal truth hidden in the saying, “ I have many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now.” His biographer testifies that 
he never brought forward in the pulpit an opinion which was only 
fermenting in his mind. “He waited till the must became wine.” 
He endeavored as far as in him lay, without sacrificing truth, not to 
shock the minds of any who were resting peacefully in an “early 
heaven and in happy views.” He was tender of weak consciences 
and all honest opinions. Liberal, in short, in all the tendency of 
his thought, with a mind open to every fresh impulse of truth and 
progress, he was yet wise in his liberalism. He knew that the law 
of all progress is rooted in the past, and that men will advance in 
religion as in everything else, not by displacement but by expansion, 
by building the temple of truth to a loftier height, not by subvert- 


* “ I desire for myself,” he says, “that I may be true and fearless” (voL 
ii., p. 249). 



F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


199 


ing it and beginning once more from the naked soil. Few minds 
have enriched Christian thought more in our time, or given it a more 
healthy or sounder impulse. 

Robertson died in the summer of 1853. Twelve years afterwards, 
when his sermons had spread far and wide,* a kindred spirit wrote 
of his “ Life and Letters,” which had been sent to him by his daugh¬ 
ter, that no “present of thought”could be more valuable. “Rob¬ 
ertson helps me,” said Bishop Ewing, “to a deeper realization of 
that underlying life of the soul which is not dependent on exter¬ 
nals, but which gives to all circumstances their true color and sig¬ 
nificance, forming as it were God within ourselves.” Alexander 
Ewing had begun his ministry a year or two before Robertson— 
in the Scottish Episcopal Church. He was ordained a deacon at 
Inverness in the autumn of 1838. But the former had nearly com¬ 
pleted his brief career before the latter came to be known as a re¬ 
markable man. Ordained a Priest in 1841, he became Bishop of 
Argyll and the Isles in 1846; but it was not till nearly ten years 
later that he began to show any of that definite influence which he 
continued to exercise with growing effect, not only in Scotland and 
in his own communion, but throughout England, till his death. He 
cannot be said to have been an original force in the Christian 
thought of the century. If Thomas Erskine and Macleod Campbell 
had not lived, Alexander Ewing would certainly not have been the 
teacher that he was; yet there was a sense in which he improved 
their teaching. With less power of thought and less theological 
knowledge—bishop as he was—he had yet upon the whole a health¬ 
ier, manlier, and more natural turn of mind than either. He was 
more of a man among men, more free from the spirit of coterie, 
with a wider range of purely human feeling, more rational and 
broadly sympathetic, with bursts of poetry in his heart. He made 
Erskine’s acquaintance in Carlyle’s company in 1855, and an inti¬ 
mate friendship soon sprung up between them, in which Macleod 
Campbell shared. He expresses in his letters repeated obligations 
to both of them. The three friends especially met at Pollok, the 
residence of Sir John Maxwell, in the neighborhood of Glasgow; 
and Bishop Ewing has left us r in one of his “Present-day Papers,” 
a pleasant sketch of the charms of the old residence and its digni¬ 
fied, thoughtful, and genial host. The sketch might stand almost 


* Eleven editions of the first volume of his sermons had been published 
before his “Life and Letters” appeared. Their circulation in America 
has also been very wide ; and tlieir republication in the Tauchnitz edition 
of English shows still more perhaps their wide-spread popularity. 




200 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


as a companion to that memorable one of Falkland, and his theo¬ 
logical friends at Tew, near Oxford, so well known in Clarendon’s 
description.* Here the friends discoursed of the greatness of the 
Divine love, and how the Divine love was only another name for 
the Divine righteousness and holiness ; how all the attributes of 
God in one sense equally condemned the sinner and equally sought 
his salvation; and how the popular theology had gone astray in ar¬ 
raying one attribute against another, instead of holding them close¬ 
ly in unity. Both Erskine and Campbell had by this time ripened 
in thought. Without changing their original stand-point, they had 
both grown in knowledge of men, and books, and theologies other 
than their own. Campbell had just published his great work on 
“The Nature of the Atonement,” which has affected so many 
minds far beyond his own school, and deepened and enriched, it 
may be said, without exaggeration, the thought of Christendom on 
this great subject. We can easily understand how the youngest 
mind of the three was stimulated, and, as he says himself, “bet¬ 
tered ” by such high converse. 

Happily there were elements of higher thought in Ewing from 
the first, and still more happily his intellectual and spiritual nature 
continued to grow with a healthy spontaneity. Notwithstanding 
all that he owed to both Campbell and Erskine, he did not allow 
himself to be confined by leading-strings of any kind. He sympa¬ 
thized with the freer tendencies of Robertson — and of Jowett, of 
whom he was an early friend—no less than with the special univer- 
salism of the Row School. He had a truer appreciation of the lim¬ 
its of dogmatic authority and of the natural historical origin of 
dogma than either of his Pollok friends. The free air of history 
and of life was more congenial to him. Systems of any kind, new 
as well as old, were uncongenial. “I do not think there is any vi¬ 
tality in the Athanasian formula,” he says in a letter to Archbishop 
Tait. “It is holding up the skeleton of the dead amid the living. 
To the great majority of those who attend our Churches, the tech¬ 
nical phrases of the creed are quite as unintelligible as are the spe¬ 
cial legal expressions in a legal deed, or the terms in a physician’s 
prescription. I would keep it as an old and curious heirloom in a 
charter-chest.” The hyper-dogmatic language which has incrusted 
the great facts of the Atonement and of revelation was to him mere 
“materialistic substitutions” for the facts themselves. “Balances 
and equivalents,” he said, “ had made of none effect the direct reve¬ 
lation of the forgiveness of sins.” 


* Clarendon’s “ Life,” vol. i., pp. 42-50. Clarendon Press ed. See also 
“ Rational Theology in England,” vol. i., pp. 118-29. 






F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 201 

With Bishop Ewing as with Robertson the centre of religious 
truth was the “underlying life of the soul” in communion with 
God, the “mind of Christ” within us. This was above all the 
teaching of his significant series of discourses, Revelation considered 
as light. All external authority — dogma, church, sacrament — is 
lower than this—at the best only scaffolding to be taken down when 
the ‘ ‘ true light that ligliteth every man ” has shown into our hearts. 
“Revelation,” he says, “does not come from the Church, but to the 
Church. She is a witness, not a source. . . . Christianity is to be 
that which Christ was on earth. ... It is the communication of a 
divine life through the manifestation of a divine life. It is the 
raising up of a divine life in our souls, through the knowledge of 
the divine life in the Son; the spirit of the Son entering into our 
spirits, and we becoming sons also in our measure.” If there is 
any difficulty as to this inner authority—this light within us reveal¬ 
ing the light of God—there is at least no substitute for it. No ex¬ 
ternal authority—no mere dogma—can be anything to us till it 
has taken hold of us and become a part of the Divine light within 
us. Or if we make it anything without its first having become this 
we lose the very nature of religion in trying violently to seize its 
good. There is and can be no religion to any man in accepting 
any law but that which is “ written on his heart,” and to which his 
own spirit witnesses as Divine. And so it is that “ Standards of 
Doctrine ” do often more harm than good; and by their very defini¬ 
tions and externalities lead the mind away from God instead of to 
him. 

It was such growing spirituality and freedom that gave Bishop 
Ewing so much influence. He constantly proclaimed the power of 
Christianity to stand by itself. It was the “ light of life.” It was 
the highest thought and the highest ethic in the world, and able to 
vindicate itself. To cry after ‘ ‘ dogmatic authority ” is to cry for 
the light of a candle when the sun is shining. Episcopacy and Pres¬ 
bytery have their respective merits. But they are only at the best 
“material apparatus.” “Let us rise to higher things,” he said in 
one of his Charges; “let us live in that region which makes the 
face to shine, and where the heart says ‘ I have seen the Lord.”’ In 
this spirit it lay very near his heart to promote something of the 
nature of a union between the Episcopal Church and the national 
Church of Scotland—a matter in which I, with some others, shared 
his confidence. Nothing came, or indeed could come, of this proj¬ 
ect at the time; but the spirit in which Bishop Ewing entered into 
it was in the highest degree liberal and praiseworthy. His idea as 
to Church government was the old rational idea found at once in 
Scripture and common-sense, and alone verifiable from history, that 


202 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


while one form of government may be better than another — more 
calculated to insure the well -being of the Church—the form itself did 
not enter into the being of the Church. He himself believed Epis¬ 
copacy to be the best form; but this not only did not prevent his 
hearty co-operation with his Presbyterian brethren, but made him 
all the more seek for opportunities of such co-operation. Among 
his last desires was to testify in the College Chapel at Glasgow to 
the power of a common faith uniting his own Church and the 
Church of Scotland, and he was only prevented doing so by an act 
of Bishop Wilson of Glasgow refusing him permission to do so. 
He was much impressed and pained by what took place on this oc¬ 
casion. Writing to a friend, he expresses himself as follows: “I 
cannot say how much it has impressed me with the feeling that 
these apparently innocent things — Apostolic Succession and High 
views (as they are called) of the Christian Sacraments—are really 
anti-Christian in their operation. When they take shape in actual 
life, they reveal their meaning to be a doctrine of election, which is 
just so much worse than the common one that it is external and of¬ 
ficial, and which, moreover, renders the sacraments themselves un¬ 
certain in their efficacy by demanding the co-operation of the will 
of the minister, if the reception of them is to be savingly beneficial. 
How destructive the doctrine must be of all simple and immediate 
fellowship betweeu man and man and between man and God, I need 
not say.” 

Bishop Ewing may not stand in the foremost rank of Christian 
thinkers; his theological education was of too desultory character; 
the mass of his thought was too slight. But his vivid intuitions of 
the Divine, and his broad Catholicity, his intensely human and 
truth-loving aspirations, gave him a significant place among those 
who have understood the needs of our time, and who have labored 
to promote a more enlightened view of Christianity. Resting in 
one or two central truths, the light of his own life, his mind was 
open on all sides to further light and knowledge. He was singular¬ 
ly progressive in all the aspects of his thought, while holding firmly 
to the Head and Centre of all Christian thought — Christ. There 
can be no higher attitude of mind. What he said of his friend Dr. 
Macleod Campbell was eminently true of himself, that he sought to 
interpret Revelation “in the light of its facts” rather than of past 
theories. So in all theology he got near to God. He was satisfied 
that the Divine substance of Truth remained unimpaired, however 
imperfect the vehicle of it might be proved to be. He and Camp¬ 
bell and Robertson did much to prepare the way for the free exer¬ 
cise of historical criticism on the letter of Scripture by showing 
how independent of all such criticism is the essence of Divine 


F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 203 

truth—“how little the treasure itself is affected by the nature of 
the vessel containing it.” This disengagement of the spirit from 
the letter—of the heavenly treasure from the earthly vessel, is des¬ 
tined to be a fertile principle in the future of Theology, and to pave 
the way at once for the free rights of criticism and the rightful de¬ 
mands of faith.* 

With Bishop Ewing’s name we might close our review. In even 
including him we have gone somewhat beyond our limits, inasmuch 
as his chief activity was towards the close of his life, and so beyond 
the period we have set to ourselves in these lectures. With the 
year 1860 at the latest a series of new lines of religious thought set 
in. There is a new outbreak of ‘ ‘ Liberalism ” at Oxford, marked 
by the publication of “Essays and Reviews.” The note of this Lib¬ 
eralism is not merely a freer application of the principles of histor¬ 
ical criticism to Scripture and dogma, but specialty the bearing of 
scientific discovery and method upon the study of Theology - . And 
this “scientific ” note is more or less a characteristic of subsequent 
speculation down to the present time. The great idea of Evolution, 
underlying all processes of thought as well as of Nature, came into 
prominence. “The side of the angels ” became a party badge, and 
the conflict of opinion passed in the main away from such topics as 


* Bishop Ewing was confessedly indebted—for the clearness of his 
views as to the distinction between Revelation and Theology, and the 
true character of Theology—to the Rev. Frederick Myers, whose “ Cath¬ 
olic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology” were published in his series 
of “ Present-day Papers.” Frederick Myers was incumbent of St. John’s, 
Keswick, from 1838 to 1851, and may be known to some of our readers as 
the author of a remarkable book, “ Lectures on Great Men.” But he de¬ 
serves still more to be known as a Christian Thinker, the significance of 
whose position might well have occupied us in these lectures if it had 
been of a wider or more public character. His “Catholic Thoughts on 
the Bible and Theology,” although written and privately printed as far 
back as 1848, were only published after Bishop Ewing’s death, and have 
unhappily never attained to much popularity. This is greatly to be re¬ 
gretted, for there are few books at once so devout and enlightened—so 
spiritually penetrative and yet so rational in the treatment of the basis 
and structure of theology. What theology is and alone can be “as a sci¬ 
ence,” its necessary imperfection and indeterminateness, its consequent 
liability to modification as time and knowledge advance, the distinction 
between the Bible and Revelation, and again between the facts of Revela¬ 
tion and the dogmas into which they have been woven, are all set forth 
with admirable perspicuity and grasp of thought. It is strange that a 
thinker so realty wise and powerful should have attracted so little atten¬ 
tion. 



204 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


had hitherto arrayed, on different sides, Evangelical, High Church,'- 
and Broad Church, to far more fundamental questions—the lines of 
which are not too strongly marked as Theistic on the one hand and 
Atheistic on the other. It was not the intention of ‘ ‘ Essays and 
Reviews” to stir such fundamental questions; nor can it be said 
that they were in themselves fairly calculated to do so.f All will 
now admit that much of the panic which the volume created was 
false and unnatural—a panic of fashion as much as of sincere relig¬ 
ion. Like all such panics it was little creditable either to the good 
sense or the critical and historical knowledge of English Christen¬ 
dom. But the effect was nevertheless what we have stated. The 
volume was treated by the Westminster Review as a reductio ad ab- 
surdum of the Broad Church position. The insinuations of Nega¬ 
tivism awoke the alarm and provoked the violence of orthodoxy, 
and so questions of criticism and history were transformed into ques¬ 
tions affecting the very existence not only of Christianity but of re¬ 
ligion— such questions as the possibility of miracle, and whether 
any Divine theory of the world is tenable. It is in this deeper 
groove that religious thought has mainly run during the last twenty- 
five years, with thinkers like Herbert Spencer, and Professors Tyn¬ 
dall and Huxley, and Matthew Arnold on one side, and on the other 
a group of Theistic thinkers, of whom one of the most conspicuous 
and distinguished is certainly Dr. James Martineau,who has recent¬ 
ly added a new and valuable contribution to the cause of Spiritual 
Philosophy.:}: This deeper conflict was no doubt opened by the 
Mills and their school within the earlier period we have reviewed, 
but it has recently passed into wider and larger phases. Materialism 
fights with bolder and more far-reaching weapons than it has ever 
before done, and the fight is one for life or death to Religion in the 
old sense of the word. It overshadows, therefore, every other con¬ 
troversy in minds who understand it, or who have any perception 
of the powerful forces at work. 

But other forces have also been in active operation, and will re¬ 
main to be described by any future historian of religious thought. 
Religion, so far from losing its hold of the higher consciousness 

* The junction of High Church and Low Church in an unworthy as¬ 
sault against Free thought within the Church,which followed “Essays 
and Reviews,” of itself marks the difference of the times. 

t I have the best reason for knowing that the editor of “Essays and 
Reviews ” had no revolutionary intention in regard to English theology. 
It was the disturbance of the religious world, largely consequent upon 
Frederic Harrison’s article in the Westminster Review , that alone gave such 
sinister significance to the volume. 

X “ Types of Ethical Theory,” Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1885. 



F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


205 


of our time, has not only survived, but it may be said has gathered 
strength under all the assaults—scientific and literary—which have 
menaced it. Our Churches were never stronger in intelligence, in 
life, in the perception of difficulties to be encountered in the world 
of thought and of action—of philosophy and philanthropy alike ; 
in the restoration of faith and the restoration of Society. Not only 
so, but there has grown up in the wake of the Broad Church move¬ 
ment a school of historical Criticism represented by such men as 
Bishop Lightfoot, with kindred scholars in England and Scotland, 
who have brought to the study of Scripture, and the problems of 
Revelation, resources of learning and of insight destined to large 
results. Different from the older school of Maurice and Kingsley, 
these Christian scholars—in the spirit of Bishop Ewing, but with 
ampler knowledge—are seeking for the meaning of Scripture not 
in any new theories, but in a closer study of its own facts. They 
are making the Books of the Old Testament and the New Testa¬ 
ment alike alive in the light of the circumstances of their origin, 
and of the contemporary ideas of their respective times. They are, 
in other words, resuscitating the Divine Thought which has been 
the life of the world in its original framework—and in its growth 
and progressiveness from lower to higher stages of development— 
and so not only making this Thought itself more living and intelli¬ 
gible, but laying the foundation of some new and more living co-or¬ 
dination of it in the future. This is a true spring of advance, which 
will not wear out as the older form of Broad Churchism has already 
almost done. That Christian criticism, applying the same methods 
of study to the Bible which have been applied to all other ancient 
literature, has a great and fruitful work before it, cannot be doubted 
by any who hold at once to criticism and to Christianity. 

Among those who led the way in this line of historical Criticism 
was undoubtedly Dean Stanley. Some have, consequently, ex¬ 
pressed astonishment that we have not given to him a prominent 
place in our review. The astonishment was so far natural, as one 
at least of Dean Stanley’s most significant books appeared within 
the fifth decade of this century, at the time when the Broad Church 
movement in its original form was acquiring prominence, viz., his 
“Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age.”* There is none of 
his many interesting writings which more distinctly indicates the 
line of thought which he followed throughout. It is instinct with 
a rare insight into the phenomena of the Apostolic time, and the 
bearing of these phenomena upon the true interpretation Of Chris¬ 
tian thought for all time. Like all his historic studies, it presents 


* Pa bUshed in 1847. 



206 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


at once a picture of the past, and a mirror of the future. This vol¬ 
ume and his biography of his great master, Arnold (1844), were un¬ 
doubtedly among the most quickening features of the new move¬ 
ment of thought, which carried forward the Christian intelligence 
after the collapse of the “ Oxford ” Tractarianism. But the new 
school of historical Criticism to which Stanley belongs has only 
made itself conspicuous since 1860, while by this date the earlier 
Broad Church movement had put forth all the freshness of its 
thought. Stanley’s main work—his “Lectures on the History of 
the Jewish Church”—was only commenced to be published in 1862. 

The new historical epoch in theology may be said to begin in 
1855, with the publication of Stanley’s second important work of 
historical criticism—“ The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians” 
—and Mr. Jowett’s no less important volumes on the Pauline “Epis¬ 
tles to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans,”in the same year. 
These volumes were hailed at the time as marking a new era in 
British Theological Literature, and they deserve to be reckoned in 
this light. They reproduced in a higher form all that was good in 
the Whately school, with a richer insight into the essential charac¬ 
teristics of New Testament thought, and a far clearer and more 
illuminating hold of the spiritual and historical position of the 
great Apostle — of the true meaning of his teaching, and the' de¬ 
velopment of his doctrine. From this time has greatly advanced 
that profounder study of the New Testament, which looks beyond 
its traditional to its real aspects, and its organic relations to con¬ 
temporary usage and opinion—which sees in it a living literature, and 
not a mere repertory of doctrinal texts—and aims to separate the es¬ 
sential from the accidental of Divine Thought, untrammelled by 
later notions and controversial fictions. The text of Scripture has 
been studied in its own meaning, and not in support of dogmas which 
were the growth of long after-centuries, and would have been wholly 
unintelligible to the writers credited with them. The spirit has been 
liberated from the letter, and the very form and pressure of Divine 
truth, as originally presented to the world, brought near to us. This 
has been especially true of the New Testament age and its marvel¬ 
lous phenomena. Other writers, whom we need not mention, have 
brought resources of exegesis to their task superior to those of Stan¬ 
ley, but no candid student can ever forget how much we owe to his 
vivid pictures of Biblical history and of Christian Institutions in their 
rise and growth; and much as he afterwards did, he never did anything 
better of its kind than the picture which he gave in his volumes on the 
Epistles to the Corinthians of the Apostolical time, with its conflicts 
of opinion and disorders of practice—particularly his sketch of the 
primitive eucharist, as “we see the banquet spread in the late even- 



F. W. ROBERTSON AND BISHOP EWING. 


20 


ing”with its strange blending of tbe earthly and the heavenly. 
Nowhere is the first freshness of the Gospel seen in more living 
struggle with Greek intellectuality and Jewish obstinacy, taking 
color and modification from both, yet under all hinderances chang¬ 
ing the face of the world. Again, the presentation of Pauline 
thought in its depth, range, and pow T er, yet with the garments of 
Rabbinical scholasticism here and there encumbering it, was made 
hardly less vivid to us in Mr. Jowett’s volumes. There were those 
who detected in these volumes traces of an underlying philosophy 
which tended to deflect here and there the straight spiritual mean¬ 
ing of the apostle—and also a tendency to minimize that meaning in 
its full scope; but no real student of the volumes can doubt that 
upon the whole Mr. Jowett tried faithfully to apply his own canon, 
that the true use of philosophy in reference to religion is “ to restore 
its simplicity, by freeing it from those perplexities which the love 
of system, or past philosophies, or the imperfections of language, or 
the mere lapse of ages, may have introduced into it.” 

Both writers mark for us a turning-point in the criticism of 
Scripture and the renascence of Christian ideas nearly contemporary 
with the influx of new ideas in philosophy and science, which have 
also acted so powerfully in recent years. They fitly close, therefore, 
the older period and open the new. We have adverted to them only 
in this point of view, and with no intention of estimating their full 
importance. They will claim such an estimate from any one who 
may afterwards venture to review the more recent forces of thought 
which are still operating around us. 

Meanwhile these lectures, desultory and imperfect as they have 
been, may help to awaken some intelligent comprehension of the 
movements of religious thought during the earlier portion of our 
century. They show how natural is the growth of this thought in 
its varying phases, springing up under manifold influences in tbe 
national consciousness; and how it is marked upon the whole by a 
character of advance. It is only stagnant in times of stagnation and 
low religious vitality. There are eternal truths no doubt, in religion 
as in ethics; but it is in the very nature of these truths, and the 
deeper inquiry which they continually excite, to take ever new ex¬ 
pression. We have been slow in Scotland to recognize this inevita¬ 
ble law of development in religious thought, supposing ourselves a 
centre to which others moved rather than a part of the common 
movement. There was good in the old Puritan idea of religious 
immobility. It has kept us strong and righteous-minded in many 
things, but it has not been without evil consequences. It has made 
us the hardest religious controversialists in the Christian world— 


208 


MOVEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 


severe upon one another—repellent where we ought to have been 
sympathetic, and uncharitable where we ought to have held each 
other by the hand. 

It is needless, however, to mourn the past. Let us try to build— 
if not for ourselves, for our children’s children—some fairer temple 
of Christian thought and worship, in which they may dwell together 
in unity. But let us not deceive ourselves. Unity can never come 
from dogma, as our forefathers unhappily imagined. Dogma splits 
rather than unites from its very nature.* It is the creature of intel¬ 
lect, and the intellect can never rest. It remains unsatisfied with 
its own work, and is always turning up afresh the soil of past opin¬ 
ion. The spirit of Christ can alone bind together the fragments of 
Truth, as they mirror themselves in our partial reason. 

If these lectures have brought home to any the conviction of how 
much larger the truth of God is than their own changing notions of 
it, and how the movements of Christian thought are for this very 
end—that we may prove all things, and hold fast that which is good 
—they will not be without fruit. We need not be afraid that any 
intelligent study of opinions differing from our own will make us 
indifferent to the truth. The truth itself can only be seen by a large 
vision. What we perhaps all need most to learn is not satisfaction 
with our opinions—that is easily acquired by most—but the capacity 
of looking beyond our own horizon; of searching for deeper founda¬ 
tions of our ordinary beliefs, and a more sympathetic appreciation 
of the beliefs of others. While cherishing, therefore, what we our¬ 
selves feel to be true, let us keep our minds open to all truth, and 
especially to the teaching of Him who is “ the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life.” 


* “Opinions are but a poor cement of human souls.”—George Eliot: 
Life,” vol. ii., p. 118. 



INDEX 


Arnold, Matthew, 131,160, 204. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 25, 32-34, 3S-45. 
(See Contents, Lecture II.) 

Bentham, 108, 137. 

Bray, Charles, 161. 

** Broad Church’’ — origin of the term, 
162. 

Buller, Charles, 139. 

Bunsen, Chevalier, 33. 

Campbell, John Macleod, 94-102, 199. 
Caudlish, Dr., 175,180. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 10,11, 86,101 (see Con¬ 
tents, Lecture V.), 108-132. 

Chalmers, Dr., 87, 92,103,113. 

Church, Richard William (now Dean of 
St. Paul’s), 78. 

Clough, A. II., 160. 

Coleridge, 10-30 (see Contents, Lecture 
I.), 101,109,163. 

Combe, George, 83. 

Comte, 150. 

Conybeare, J. J., 53. 

Copleston, Bishop ofLlandaff, 31. 

Eliot, George, 158,160-162,189. 

Erskine, Thomas, 83-93,119,166,199. 
“Essays and Reviews,” 203. 

Ewing, Bishop, 199-203. 

Froude, J. A., 119,124,160. 

Fronde, R. II., 63-66, 69. 

Gladstone, W. E., 33, 48, 50, 78, 80, 177. 
Gorham, Rev. Mr., 196. 

Green, Joseph Henry, on Coleridge, 13. 
Grote, George, 154-157. 

Hall, Robert, 108. 

Hamilton, Sir William, 28. / 

Hampden, Bishop, 32, 33, 45-51. 

Hare, A. W„ 29. 


Hare, J. C.,11, 27-29. 

Harrison, Frederic, 204. 

Hawkins, Dr., 31. 

Hayward, Abraham, 139. 

Hennell, Charles and Sara, 160,161. 

Irving, Edward, 97,100-103,113. 

Jowett, Rev. Benjamin (Professor), 207. 

Keijle, John, 31, 58, 66-69, 74. 

Kingsley, Charles, 144,173,178-183. 

Lamb, Charles, 11. 

Leslie, Sir John, 83, 86. 

Lewes, G. H., 157,158. 

Lightfoot, Bishop, 205. 

Mat.an, C6sar, 187. 

Martineau, James, 156, 204. 

Maurice, F. D., 84, 92, 139, 141, 162, 183. 

(See Contents, Lecture VII.) 

Mearns, Dr., 88. 

Melbourne, Viscount, 52. 

Mill, James, 132-136. 

Mill, John Stuart, 109, 122,132-158. (See 
Contents, Lecture VI.) 

Milmau, H. H., 54-57. 

Mozley, J. B., 44, 78. 

Mozley, T. (“Reminiscences”), 46, 48. 
Myers, Rev. Frederick, 203. 

Newman, Francis W., 80, 160. 

Newman, J. H., 39, 48, 58, passim (see 
Contents, Lecture III ), 170, 194. 

“ Noetics,” The, 32, 73. 

Oakelky, Rev. F., 78. 

Oxford Movement. (See Contents, Lect¬ 
ure III.) 

Palmer, William, 70. 

Pusey, Dr., 60, 61,72, 74,169,178, 





210 


INDEX. 


Robertson, F.W., 174,1S4-199. {See ( 
tents, Lecture VIII.) 

Rose, H. J., 53, 60. 

Row Heresy, The. {See Campbell.) 

SoHLEIERMACHER, 2S, 51. 

Scott, A. J. (afterwards Principal 
Owens College), 97,99. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 59, S2,123. 

Shairp, Principal, 97. 

Shee, Sergeant, 139. 

Smith, Dr. Pye, 10S. 

Spencer, Herbert, 143,159. 

Stanley, Dean, 54, 205. 

Sterling, John, 29,30, 139,141. 

Story, Robert (of Roseneatb), 97. 


- Strachey, Edward, 170. 

Tayi.or, W. (of Norwich), 123. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 164. 

Thirlwall, Bishop, 51-54,139. 

Thomson, Dr. Andrew, S5, 93,103. 
f “ Tracts for the Times,” 70, passim. 
Traill, H. D., on Coleridge, 10, 25. 

Ward, Rev. W. G., 7S. 

Whately, Archbishop, 31, passim, 34-38. 
White, Blanco, 33, 48. 

Wilberforce (Bishop), 4S-50, 54. 

Wilson, Bishop (of Glasgow), 202. 
Wordsworth, 9, 10,141,149. 

Wright, Thos. (of Borthwick), 104-106. 


THE END. 




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